Author / DrMabuse

by DrMabuse

My Head Hurts! Therefore, Comic Books Are Bad!

Proving once again how culturally irrelevant they are, the Book Babes have declared graphic novels as the harbinger of evil. So suggesth one Ellen Hetzel:

I am patiently working my way through two graphic novels, David B?s Epileptic and Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries, just one more indication in our world that Western culture increasingly depends on visual messages to perceive and understand what’s going on. Do I think this is a good thing? No. It seems like the mind has to be able to wrap itself around abstract ideas in order to reason, and visuals?at least as we know them through TV, movies and advertising?cause us to respond instinctively and emotionally.

Let’s discuss just how profoundly stupid this paragraph is. Consider the following:

First off, if the objection here is over any book medium contains “abstract ideas,” then I suppose we should discount the whole of literature outside of rigid genre-based narratives that offer nothing in the way of ambiguity. Ulysses? Sorry, Mr. Joyce, you’re too “abstract.” Tristram Shandy? Borges? Faulkner? Gaddis? Lessing? Flann O’Brien? Sorry, folks, the mind must “wrap itself around abstract ideas” in order to understand you. We’ll have to throw you into the dust heap. But Dan Brown and John Grisham? Well, you’re part of the literal-minded club. So come on by for some barbeque and MGD.

Second, what specifically is wrong with “visual messages?” Is Hetzel really advocating a culture based entirely (if not exclusively) on words? That’s sure fantastic for the 42 million Americans who can’t read or for quick international symbols that convey a point faster than words. I guess those Egyptians were fundamental dumbasses “wrapping themselves around abstract ideas” when they dared to communicate through hieroglyphics. I suppose Hetzel will be demanding next that we replace erect penises and floppy breasts with great Puritanical raiments of language.

Third, “visual messages” — or, more specifically, mediums that involve visual messages — are not exclusive to Western culture, nor are they as recent as Hetzel suggests. (Get schooled in ukiyo-e, Babe.)

Thus, if I am to understand Hetzel’s argument, it is this:

1. I can’t understand this graphic novel thingy. My head hurts.
2. Well, if I can’t understand it, then it must be fundamentally wrong for everybody! It must be abstract!
3. The cute little comic book thingy is composed of “visual messages.”
4. Since I can’t understand the cute little comic book thingy, therefore anything involving “visual messages” is fundamentally wrong!
5. My head hurts. I’m out of aspirin. This is NOT A GOOD THING!
6. There are other “visual messages” on teevee and advertising.
7. Teevee and advertising are lesser mediums than the book.
8. Therefore, the cute little comic book thingy is a lesser medium.

It’s good to have such circular bullshit come so easily, isn’t it?

I’ve had my problems with the Book Babes before, but I never suspected that they’d serve up such idiotic logic. I’m quite stunned that the Book Standard would allow something so fundamentally moronic to infiltrate its pages.

(via Bookslut)

by DrMabuse

BEA: The Last Post

Several weekends outside of the City prevented me from getting to the remainder of the BEA material I collected. But this weekend, I went through the material, eliminated a good deal of the quacks, and now offer the final installment of my BEA coverage.

Media Blasters is a publisher which specializes in translations of Japanese and Korean books. They’ve just produced their first original Japanese book called Death Trance, a tie-in to an upcoming film by Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus). Frank Pannone told me that Death Trance features samurais, zombies, ninjas and magic. Media Blasters has been able to carve a niche, largely because it specializes specifically in shonen publications, aimed specifically at boys, and yaoi (pronounced “yowie”) publications, which are gay romances aimed at woman.

Media Blasters isn’t the only publisher specializing in dichotomies along these lines. Dark Horse Comics announced at BEA that it would be entering the field of Harlequin manga. The manga in question will be based on Harlequin romances. Dark Horse will be unveiling two lines: one for adults, one that is youth-friendly.

Agate Publishing arrived at BEA publicizing Freshwater Road, the debut novel by actress Denise Nicholas (star of Room 222 and In the Heat of the Night). Doug Siebold described it as “Mary Tyler Moore writing To Kill a Mockingbird.” It’s a coming-of-age tale about a young African American college student who goes to Mississippi to register voters in 1964. The book will be featured in the September issue of Essence. Agate also has a pocket relationshp guide called The Player Slayer, set for publication on Valentine’s Day, 2006. The book is very tiny and is a “real world revision of The Rules.” Of course, if you can’t wait that long for this major publishing event, you can always just throw yourself into the dating pool, sans guide or books, and learn how to swim.

Fortunately, I found more pertinent tomes when I talked with Allan Kornblum of Coffee House Press. Aside from publishing Gilbert Sorrentino’s latest novel, Lunar Follies, Coffee House has a memoir coming out this summer from U Sam Oeur called Crossing Three Wildernesses. Oeur lived through the Pol Pot forced labor camps (take that, James Frey!). Prior to this, he had studied for seven years in the United States. But what makes this memoir interesting is how Oeur was able to stay alive through Walt Whitman’s poems, the Declaration of Independence and Kennedy’s inaugural address — all of which he had memorized and all of this while feigning illiteracy. Another Coffee House memoir is from poet Jack Marshall describing Marshall growing up in an ethnically charged household and Marshall becoming a writer in the process. Coffee House is also committed to publishing the short fiction of poet Kenneth Koch. Koch, who died only a few years ago, was primarily known as a poet (Random House has been publishing Koch’s poetry), but Coffee House has been picking up the slack to get Koch’s complete works published.

Akashic Books’ Johanna Engels was kind enough to talk with me despite suffering from a cold . Their lead title for the fall is Marlon James’ John Crow’s Devil. James is a Jamiacan author and this is his debut novel. Akashic is perhaps best known for their city-based noir series and I was bemused to see that this concept is expanding to nearly every city on the planet. Since Brooklyn Noir did so well, Akashic has been branching out to Chicago, DC, San Francisco and Dublin (the four primed for the next season) and beyond (Manhattan, Baltimore, Twin Cities, L.A. and Miami compilations are also in the works). Engels told me that they keep the anthology editors local, people who have lived in the city for a while so that they can pull from local authors. The only exception to this is with Dublin Noir, where a more international mix has been effected. Joe Meno’s Hairstyles of the Damned was Akashic’s biggest success in its history. Meno fans will be happy to know that Akashic is publishing the paperback version of How the Hula Girl Sings.

I talked with Arcade Publishing the morning after Ismail Kadare won the Man Booker International Prize. Arcade has a dozen Kadare titles in print with another one coming in February (the new Kadare book called The Successor) that may be pushed up to October to take advantage of the prize. Arcade has been the exclusive American distributor for Kadare’s work for the past eighteen years. Because there’s been considerable debate over whether a literary award translates into sales, I tracked down one the heads of Arcade and asked if they had a specific sales strategy in mind. The sense I got was that Arcade is taking the award very seriously (more so than the regular Booker Prize award) and had commissioned their sales reps to begin work on sales sheets that very morning. The head couldn’t be any clearer. He told me, “The regular UK Booker has an immediate effect in the U.S. It has for the past many years — at least a decade. We’re sure, and our sales reps are sure, that this award will too, especially when you look at the lineup over who Kadare was picked.”

The new Kadare book, The Successor, deals with the man in line to be the successor to Hoxha, the Albanian dictator. The main character is Hoha’s number two man, willingly shifting with the political tide . But the day before he is due to be named ruler of Albania, he committed suicide. Either that or he may have been murdered. Kadare has framed his next book around this murder mystery that also explores the horrors of Communism and how it affects people’s lives.

As alluded to in my previous post, I talked with Chris Roberson, the publisher for Monkeybrain Books. One of their more intresting books is a collection of essays devoted to Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe. Monkeybrain is offering a nonfiction anthology, Myths for the Modern Age, which collects Farmer’s uncollected essays and fleshes out the Wold Newton concept with several other writers (including Jess Nevins) and is edited by Win Scott Eckert. Adventure! is an all-genre, all-adventure anthology edited by Roberson that includes science fiction, Westerns, and fantasy. The only restriction on the contributors was that the stories “had to contain a healthy dose of adventure.” There are contributions by Michael Moorcock, Kim Newman, Kage Baker and comes out in November.

Justin, Charles & Co. specializes in pop culture-based books, such as a Douglas Adams bio written by Mike Simpson and a guy’s guy book for the perfect Las Vegas weekend. (In Justin, Charles’ defense, I should also point out that they also publish crime fiction.) But I was more interested in film critic’s James Berardinelli’s reviews, of which a second volume is forthcoming. Steve Hull told me that the first collection sold well enough to warrant a second volume. Beyond being a mere collection of Berardinelli’s work, there are extra chapters on DVD easter eggs and the best special edition director’s cuts. Apparently, one of the key decisions to publish Berardinelli was that he receives a substantial number of hits and is considered by Hull to be the most widely read Internet critic.

On the crime fiction side, Justin, Charles’ big book is Richard Marinick’s Boyos. The story behind the book is quite interesting. Marinick started off as a Massachusetts State cop who decided that there was no money in this. So he started robbing armored cars. He ran an armored car ring in Boston for eight years and was caught. He did ten years in Massachusetts State Prison. While in the hoosegow, he earned a college degree and decided that he always wanted to be a writer. Upon release from the joint, he went to work as a union tunnel worker and worked on Boyos for years. Every day, Marinick would work on the book — in the tunnels, in the pouring rain. Eventually, the book was published.

After several attempts, I was able to track down Paul Cohen, the head of Monkfish Publishing. Monkfish specializes in spiritual books, but he was also the man who published the infamous Gerard Jones’ Ginny Good. (Perhaps not so coincidentally, Gerard Jones recently emailed me, among 16,000 others, with news that he’s put up MP3s of a Ginny Good audio book in progress, which can now be found at his site.) Like the rest of us, Cohen found out about Gerard Jones through an article. He liked Jones’ voice and got a copy of Ginny Good (after not particularly caring for The Astral Weekend) and decided to publish it. I asked Cohen if he considered Ginny Good to be a spiritual book and he told me that he did, calling it “the epiphany of a generation.” Specifically, Cohen was struck by the importance of family and relationships seen in Jones’ book, which he considered deeply spiritual. One thing I didn’t know was that Cohen employed David Stanford, Ken Kesey’s longtime editor, to edit the book.

Of course, no BEA report would be complete without a look at some of the more unusual products. Toronto’s Marilyn Herbert offers Bookclub-in-a-Box. What might this be? Well, you get a complete guide, support materials, pamphlets that could be handed out to readers, custom bookmarks, and a sticky pad to take notes — in other words, a prix fixe menu which covers all bases. Or not. I asked Herbert if she had recipes for scones or perhaps an ideal way of setting up a table. She told me that she hadn’t, but that recipes were in the works.

What troubled me about the Bookclub-in-a-Box concept was how literal-minded it was. Herbert showed me a Life of PI sample and the thick bundle of information revealed copious efforts to reveal every possible enigma (such as how did Richard Parker, the tiger, get his name). What’s more, Bookclub-in-a-Box hadn’t bothered to contact any of the authors they profiled. So many of their answers are unilateral. Then again, who knows? Perhaps this concept might play well in the sticks.

by DrMabuse

Creature Features and More

If you lived in Northern California and remember the UHF programming of the 1960s through the 1980s, this site has done an admirable job chronicling the various ways that UHF stations aired movies during that time (complete with fantastic hosts such as Bob Wilkins and cheesy jokes galore). If you were too young or you weren’t growing up in the area, let’s just say that you missed out an a very important cultural indoctrination process. I’d venture to say that I wouldn’t hold nearly as much regard for Godzilla or horror exploitation films had I not seen them through these conduits.

by DrMabuse

Round Robin

  • In light of the assaults on eminent domain and flag burning (and with the frightening prospect of Justice Rehnquist resigning looming in the air), there’s at least some good news on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting/PBS budget cuts. Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted by a 284-140 vote to rescind the $100 million cutback. And that’s really what current politics is about these days: finding scant hope in small victories while the fiber and sanctity of this nation is gutted. So bust out the party poppers while the apocalypse ravages across the heartland.
  • The so-called “Pope” has published a book that urges all non-believing Europeans to live as though God exists. If that fails, then there’s always putting on a tin hat and looking for crop circles in the hinterland.
  • It looks like Limbaugh and Noonan are running away from the Klein book. Their latest amusing claim is that The Truth About Hilary was “written and published by a bunch of left-wingers.” Well, that’s pretty interesting, given that Sentinel, the publisher of the book, describes itself on its webpage as “a dedicated conservative imprint within Penguin Group (USA) Inc. It has a mandate to publish a wide variety of right-of-center books on subjects like politics, history, public policy, culture, religion and international relations.”
  • Cynthia Ozick talks with the Melbourne Age.
  • The Connection continues its series of writers talking about other writers who have influenced them. The latest audio installment is Russell Banks talking about Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
  • Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell is on a book tour for his new novel, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way.
  • So can James Frey follow up the intensity of A Million Little Pieces with his new memoir? Mike Thomas of the Chicago Sun-Times talks with Frey and learns that Frey’s life is “sort of surreally magnificent.”
  • James McManus has been tapped to write a poker column for the New York Times. Executive editor Bill Keller says that McManus’ column will be “a literate combination of the drama, strategy, psychology and color of card play that should interest both serious players and the simply curious.” This from a guy whose idea of literacy is questionable at best.
by DrMabuse

Watered Down Knowledge, The Slim-Fast Book Diet: What a Concept!

For the last 12 years, the wax has accumulated in my ears, preventing me from comprehending any book more than 200 pages. Brain cells have been lost thanks to an unfortunate experience with hallucinogenics that occurred during my midlife crisis. And I no longer have any patience for a reading experience that lasts longer than 45 minutes. Since the Times is so gutless when it comes to printing four letter words (yet strangely fixated on sodomy and other carnal activities of the genteel), and since it harbors an illusion that it is a family newspaper, I’ll merely connote a small nugget, if you will, published by Harry G. Frankfurt. It shines like the bottom of a clean unsoiled toilet for readers too indolent and too inveterate to read a book of normal length. It represents, in two words, the future.

Two books stare at me at my bookshelf. One is so large that I cower behind my four-poster bed, hoping that the episodes of Lost I TiVoed will get me through this cold and lonely night. The book is thick and large. And I haven’t seen anything like it in my life. Never mind that its author, N.A.M. Rodger, spent several years of his life becoming an authoritative expert on naval history or that the book in question contains about a hundred pages of maps and other valuable resources to aid and abet the truly obsessed nautical man. For I am neither a nautical man nor an intellectual. However, I do manage to sound pompous and authoritative enough to maintain my regular gig at the Times. Bombast and bluster should count for something, no?

Consider the skim book, which resembles a Slim Jim in makeup and nutritional value, the one that is short enough to give you the basic information yet without scholarship or that pivotal additional context. These things are lovely, no? You can read it one in a few hours, go to a cocktail party, and talk as if you’re an expert on Waterloo! These fantastically thin books, influenced by the abridged grandeur of Cliff and SparkNotes, are devoid of footnotes and are, for the most part, useless in an academic environment. But doesn’t it feel good, dear reader, to allow such colossal hubris to go to your head and to think that being knowledgable means barely retaining the basics?

I call for a new age of thin books, whereby people learn less and scholarship is spruned rather than stomached! Bring me 50 page volumes that give me everything I need to know about the rise and fall of Genghis Khan! Better yet, why not one-page volumes contained in an expensive spine? I offer the ideal biography of Napoleon:

COVER
TITLE PAGE: Napoleon: A Biography
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: “Napoleon was short. THE END.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR PAGE

Is this not the most ideal reading experience one can have? Does not the salient fact that Napoleon was a short man stick out? Publishers and authors alike can rest easy that they are saving the marketplace! Prices for books will go down. Authors will be able to publish 300 books a year. And those pivotal sound bytes of knowledge will soar!

I can imagine the book clubs discussing the whole of a book contained within one sentence. The conversations will last no more than five minutes, discussing Napoleon’s short stature, and then everyone can, at long last, get blitzed on the merlot. What a joyous epoch of knowledge lies ahead of us!

So bring on this new age of slim books. Dismantle the history graduate programs and the other pedantic forms of education that rarely pay off. The time has come, at long last, to put the Robert Caros and the William T. Vollmanns out of work and let the silent vox populi scream out their malformed thoughts from the highest summit.