Everywhere I go these days, from swank parties to low-key affairs, I see people — charming and intelligent people who should know better — gripping their red plastic cups (and sometimes actual wine glasses) with this godawful ruddy swill called two buck chuck. The whole point of this ghastly red liquid is to get as drunk as fucking possible using as little money as possible. (In this case, two measly dollars.) Which makes it another part of this goddam lofty American ideal: Get there as fast as you can in the cheapest manner possible. To hell with quality, to hell with life, to hell with savoring the moment.

These people have the audacity to call this shit “wine.” As in “Can I pour you some more wine, Ed?”

No, motherfucker. You can pour me a half-decent glass of something with actual taste and texture that I can nurse for an hour while you and the boys get blitzed in minutes. All because this crap is named after a motherfucker named Charles Shaw, whose name sounds suspiciously like a vicious investment banker who takes every dollar in your savings account and leaves in a cloud of dust before he can hand you a receipt.

I have to ask this all-important question: Does it feel good to drink a “wine” whose only real achievement is underpricing cheap Gallo?

I’m no vintner and I’m hardly a wine connoisseur. And the last thing I want to do is advocate that Sideways wine snob bullshit that shows no signs of dying among the hipsters. But I’ve learned over the years that wine isn’t meant to be guzzled. When I taste this shit, it conjures up the unsavory notion of fermented Kool-Aid. And the last thing I need when I’m relaxing is to be reminded of that shifty pitcher-sized son of a bitch with the permanent smile on that bulbous and untrustworthy face.

What makes two buck chuck any difference from grabbing a forty ouncer? If you’re going to inhabit a alcohol paradigm this low, why not drink two buck chuck in a paper bag? While you’re at it, have a glass of this junk to wash down with your crappy Big Mac meal.

If this is about getting trashed (and by the way that people slam their two buck chuck, that’s certainly the ostensible goal), why not bourbon? Hell, why not ether? Drinking two buck chuck feeds into the blotto impulse but it tastes like a poorly mixed girly drink. And the sad thing is that the bartender’s not there to fix it right. It’s the drinking equivalent to a pup staying on the porch while the big dogs play.

Plus, two buck chuck rhymes with “fuck.” Outside of Orangina (as pronounced ni New Jersey), I can’t think of a single successful beverage that rhymed so bluntly with copulative terminology. It’s a wonder that no one has suggested “two buck chuck and a fuck.” That honesty (get trashed, get fucked, wake up with a hangover wondering who the hell this stranger is) would make me feel so much better about the deceit of it all.

So fuck two buck chuck. Fuck it hard.

Me? I’ll be drinking my Kendall Jackson pinot. It’s eight bucks more, but it lasts a whole evening. And when you compare the dollar-to-drinking rate of each (a bottle of two buck chuck in an hour versus a ten dollar bottle of Kendall over five hours), the balance evens out.

“No woman is worth dating, much less talking to, if she can’t name the three major oceans. And if she names the fourth (established a few years ago) or the fifth, then she’s more than okay in my book.” — Me, in email to friend.

I’m currently reading Stanley Elkin’s George Mills, an ambitious and resiliently inventive novel about a family line doomed to failure (all of them are named “George Mills” and extend back a thousand years) and susceptible to the throngs of losers, charlatans and fakes that exploit humanity with kooky get-rich-quick schemes and use the various Millses as lackeys and novitiates. Elkin has a considerable bone to pick with astrologers, con men, and even telethon hucksters like Jerry Lewis. What makes George Mills such an interesting read is that the various George Millses are, not unlike Marquand’s George Apley, satirical characters that are written with a quiet sympathy. One hopes that these characters will see the blinding obstacles which prevent them from taking control of their lives. And yet because the reader knows this type so well, they are almost always doomed to failure or a late recognition of their problems.

I’m fascinated by this type of protagonist, because it doesn’t exactly involve a clear hero or an antihero. (For purposes of clarification, I’ll call this character type a “psuedo-hero.”) The interesting thing about Marquand and Elkin is that, by hanging their novels around psuedo-heroes, they both tapped into a wide reception (Marquand with postwar middle-class readers, Elkin with the critical community), only to drop rapidly out of public consciousness. (Most of Marquand’s work is out of print. Avon put out a series of Elkin trade paperbacks in the mid-nineties, most of which I was able to find years ago in remainder piles.)

Fortunately, Dalkey Archive Press has kept all of Elkin’s work in print. They also have an essay by Rick Moody about Elkin.

• As reported several places, Jonathan Coe has won the Samuel Johnson nonfiction prize for Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson.
• Edward Jones has won this year’s IMPAC award.
• The Blog Story thing is making the rounds. Sarah and Gwenda have offerings.
• In Congo, 1,000 die per day: why isn’t it a news story?
• To hell with Michael Jackson. Apparently, Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, who is a big fan of Martin Amis, got drunk and attacked him at a book signing. The moral of the story? Celebrities are scarier than regular Joes.
• Ellen Feldman’s new novel speculates on what happened to Peter van Pels, the boy that Anne Frank had a crush on.
• Haruki Murakami still contends that he’s not part of the literary establishment. There’s also some stuff in the article about writing routines and the like.
• It looks like the Village Voice might be taken a cue from the litblogosphere. Not only has their books section included readings, but they’re now sending Ed Park to cover book signings.
• Online dating services are doing big box office in Australia. We’re talking $15 million a year. What’s interesting is that the people who use this dating services (at least in Australia) seem terrified by the idea of meeting someone at a pub. There are some 1,700 services that exist which cater to specific crowds. And now there’s a consumer’s guide available purporting to explain whether these services actually work.
• Tiffany Murray lists her top ten dark comedies.
• Bono on Bono: Must we feed this man’s ego any further by printing a book on this?
• Birnbaum dances with Alma Guillermoprieto.
• And Galleycat gets to the bottom of this whole eBay ARC-selling bidness.