Author / DrMabuse

by DrMabuse

Jonathan Lethem: Pop Culture Truthteller or Gimmicky Stylist?

For some curious reason, Jessa seems more eager to link to Amazon titles rather than John Leonard’s “Welcome to New Dork” in the NYRoB, which has been online for a week. She suggests that she can’t get into Lethem’s fiction because “his metaphors kept getting in the way.”

I think that Ms. Crispin is being too unequivocal with Lethem’s work and should give the man another chance. While Lethem’s novels can be gimmicky, I consider him to be one of the most interesting fiction stylists working today, a conclusion that, admittedly, took me several books to figure out. Consider the many genres Lethem has worked in. Consider his use of language and his own determination never to write the same kind of novel twice. I haven’t read The Disappointment Artist yet, but I did read Lethem’s “The Beards” (an excerpt from the upcoming nonfiction book) in The New Yorker several weeks ago (unfortunately, not available online), a fascinating glimpse at how Lethem used pop culture to disguise his growing disconnectedness with the world when personal tragedies bogged down his life. And if we look at the McDonald’s in the middle of a dystopian future in Amnesia Moon, the White Castle burgers clutched onto as comfort food in the early moments of Motherless Brooklyn, or the comics and music in The Fortress of Solitude, we see a writer who willing to present pop culture as an elixir that can often be debilitating to existence.

This interesting dilemma in current novels, what indeed separates Lethem from a J-Franz gushing over Peanuts, is what Leonard singles out in his essay among current writers. But I think Leonard may be too hard on Lethem. Where other contemporary writers have used nostalgia as a way to throw in a cheap gag or to pad out a novel, I would suggest that Lethem is the only literary figure brave enough to recognize its potential as an imprisoner. Not even Paul Auster could do that when he summarized the plot of Out of the Past in Ghosts.

by DrMabuse

Tanenhaus Watch: March 20, 2005

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WEEKLY QUESTION: Will this week’s NYTBR reflect today’s literary and publishing climate? Or will editor Sam Tanenhaus demonstrate yet again that the NYTBR is irrelevant to today’s needs? If the former, a tasty brownie will be sent to Mr. Tanenhaus’ office. If the latter, the brownie will be denied.

THE COLUMN-INCH TEST:

Fiction Reviews: 1 – 2 1/2 page review, 1 one-page science fiction roundup, 2 one-page reviews, 1 half-page reviews. (Total books: 9. Total space: 6 pages.)

Non-Fiction Reviews: 1 1 1/2 page review, 5 one-page reviews, 2 half-page reviews. (Total books: 9. Total space: 7.5 pages.)

While Tanenhaus’ Hollywood theme offers an interesting thematic approach to non-fiction coverage, Tanenhaus again demonstrates that, despite a lengthy review of Ian McEwan’s Saturday, he has no interest in serious coverage of today’s fiction, reducing science fiction to a round-up and including a throwaway review for Linda Ferri’s Enchantments, perhaps to point out to his detractors that he’s covering foreign titles.

Tanenhaus can delude himself all he wants with the 1:1 fiction-to-nonfiction title ratio on his table of contents page. But the column inches tell the real story. This week, he weighs in again at his trusty 44.44% ratio, still well below the 48% minimum requirement for fiction coverage.

We consider Ian McEwan to be one of the greatest living writers and we like to see him covered as much as anybody (particularly by someone like Zoe Heller). But last we heard, McEwan wasn’t the only guy pumping out novels these days.

Brownie Point: DENIED!

THE HARD-ON TEST:

This test concerns the ratio of male to female writers writing for the NYTBR.

Three of the five fiction reviews are written by women. Meanwhile, only one of the eight nonfiction reviews is penned by a female.

One.

We’re extremely bothered by Tanenhaus’s continuing inability to pair women up with nonfiction books. By contrast, a quick look over at this Sunday’s Washington Post Book World section sees women covering two memoirs and a family history (along with several fiction titles). While the troubling problem of women reviewers relegated to fiction and memoirs cuts across the board (for fuck’s sake, why can’t a woman tackle that unwieldy Galbrieth biography?), we’re still scratching our heads over why Sam Tanenhaus, despite being the editor of one of the most promiment weekly book review sectiosn in the United States, can’t ferret out the females.

This isn’t exactly rocket science. It doesn’t even take much in the way of rumination. Here’s a few ideas that come immediately to mind: Jane Juska reviewing a nonfiction book about aging or sexuality, the genteel Katha Pollitt trying to figure out the state of comics, Molly Ivins covering Michael Savage’s Liberalism is a Mental Disorder from a medical perspective, Dorothy Allison seeing if Jeannette Angell’s Callgirl has streetcred, or just about any brave voice daring to cover Laurel Leff’s forthcoming Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (which is in fact highly critical of the Gray Lady). Wouldn’t that be a book review section worth reading? And wouldn’t this be a great way to balance off the out-of-control male-to-female ratio while presenting stirring nonfiction coverage to a national audience?

It’s too bad that Tanenhaus can’t kill a few birds (or, in this case, far too many priapic dryads) with one stone.

Brownie Point: DENIED!

THE QUIRKY PAIR-UP TEST:

We’re pleased to see Zoe Heller covering Saturday, even if the review is meekly critical and the interview with Cynthia Ozick she quotes comes from Robert Birnbaum and she (or perhaps Tanenhaus) doesn’t even acknowledge the source. (Besides, it’s not like Tanenhaus would ever reveal that there’s this thoughtful literary guy on the Net named Robert Birnbaum who is providing better interviews than most newspapers.)

Does the world really need another essay from blowhard Joe Queenan? Queenan demonstrates yet again that he is neither particularly witty nor terribly original. Having Queenan complain about ghostwritten books is a bit like watching cheap paint dry on a wall. One yearns to see the paint do something unpredictable, such as fly through the air or disappear from one’s visual plane. But alas, the paint will do nothing but dry and the senses will deaden. If Tanenhaus believes that Queenan is the quintessential hatchet man, with his self-important asides (“Either way, I think the American people need to know.”) and rampant generalizations (“…ghostwriters are by nature timid, diplomatic, gun-shy.”), then I urge Mr. Tanenhaus to reread the collected works of H.L. Mencken and discover what real shitstorming is all about. Hell, even some old school Jimmy Breslin. The Gray Lady’s continued employment of Joe Queenan is an embarassment to all of the muckrakers and wiseasses who have ever composed for newspapers. It is about as far removed from a quirky pair-up as one can get.

(And for that matter, a far more focused and succinct essay on ghostwriting can be found on the back page by Sarah Lyall. Lyall, unlike Queenan, lets her subject speak for herself and actually allows the reader to form his own judgments. Go figure. Even so, what are two essays about ghostwriting doing in the same review section?)

We have nothing else to say, but…

Brownie Point: DENIED!

CONTENT CONCERNS:

Despite our overall disappointment with this week’s flat coverage, we did enjoy Neil Genzlinger’s comparative review on Hollywood, particularly the interesting suggestion of the movie consumer being irrelevant. And John Leonard doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head with his Disneywar review, but comes close.

We’re extremely confused by the Teutonic capitalization (or lack thereof) of Rip “van” Winkle. Before being appropriated by Washington Irving (and earning the “Rip Van Winkle” name), we understand that it came from a Norse folktale called “The Goatherd.” Sure, we’ve seen some editions lower-case the V. But most people understand that there’s a difference between “Van” and “von.”

Jack Shafer raises a few interesting points on New New Journalism, criticizing Robert S. Boynton quite rightly for trying to lump today’s journalists in a wide net. But he fails to factor in the influence of the Internet or, for that matter, how the endless publication of memoirs and the popularity of reality TV may have affected current journalism.

CONCLUSIONS:

Brownie Points Denied: 3 (a new record!)

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by DrMabuse

Harlan Ellison Will Fuck Your Shit Up

SHERMAN OAKS — Much like Mark Twain, he’s damning the human race again, but that’s just Harlan. Ellison is the kind of crank that makes for a good feature on a slow news day.

“FEED MY EGO, SUZE! I AM THE GREATEST LIVING WRITER THIS PLANET HAS GOT! LOOK AT MY COPIOUS NOTES. WHY, EVERY SENTENCE IS PURE GENIUS! YOU CAN FIND MY NOTES IN THE FILE CABINET, IN THE FILE MARKED ‘IDEAS THAT PIGEONHEADS CAN’T COMPREHEND.’ THESE IGNORANT FOOLS DON’T UNDERSTAND MY GENIUS!”

Another day, another dollar, another cash-strapped editor conned out of his money. $500,000 for a 24-word Ellison piece of flash fiction, and it’s only Tuesday. Another wing to add to the sprawling Ellison estate. Ellison has chewed out another editorial intern over the phone for mispronouncing Solzhenitsyn’s last name. The intern is sobbing and apologizing, and telling Ellison that she’s on Xanax and that she’s been with a therapist since the age of 12. But Ellison doesn’t budge and wants to hear her whimper some more before hanging up. This is clearly a fight worth winning.

Harlan Ellison’s hubris fed a lot of hungry intellectual minds in their twenties looking for a bombastic figurehead. Unfortunately, most of them grew up, which wasn’t good for Ellison’s midlist standing. But that hasn’t fazed Ellison. These days, he spends his autumn years calling random people at odd hours, getting angry over the important details that most people take for granted. “Damn you!” he cries out to a delivery boy earning minimum wage. “I told you I wanted the California roll, not the Nevada roll! Don’t you understand the difference between Las Vegas and La Jolla? What the hell is a Nevada roll anyway?” High blood pressure hasn’t stopped Harlan Ellison from getting angry or correcting people of these unfortunate mistakes, which he blames on “cultural amnesia” — in this case, the unpardonable errors of a Sherman Oaks sushi bar. A self-made man of privilege should get what he wants. Screw the working class and the moronic masses. It’s justice, Ellison-style.

Harlan Ellison, 70, has been denied his meds again. He’s sitting in an atrium of his own design, pointing out how superior it is to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel. There are many, many, many, many, many strange things here: the Rolodex of credible, perceived and imagined enemies out to get Ellison, the various black helicopters that Ellison insists were manufactured and put into service by the Department of Defense, and an old-fashioned card catalog detailing the people he claims to know or might have known, and the hyperbole he’s built his careeer upon.

On a bathroom wall there’s a Will Eisner drawing of The Spirit, drawn by Eisner in about ten minutes, signed: “To Harlan: Thank you for ripping out my left testicle. I needed to feel unnecessary pain, and I needed a second opinion when the blood clotted. All best, Will.” It’s art, goddammit. Never mind that it was one of about 90 drawings that Eisner made one autumn day in 1982.

All of this is part of how Harlan Ellison gets what he wants. He recently broke the nose of one journalist who liked “his touching little fantasy tales.” But he didn’t just break the journalist’s nose. He lectured the journalist for three hours on genre ghettoization. This was a matter of pride.

While some might contend that Ellison has become a parody of himself, there are still others who will happily kiss his 70 year old ass, despite its many wrinkles. Ellison regularly wards off these fanboys, commissioning hit men to knock them off.

“Their lives are worthless,” he says. “It’s the individual’s responsibility to stop heckling writers. For fuck’s sake, they might start literary blogs.”