Ed Park, a man of many parts, divides again this week at Five Chapters with "The Oblivion Arms." He also blogs this week at Powell's, while also editing The Believer, crafting The New York Ghost, and sharing his Personal Days with you.
I'm listening to Roth's The Dying Animal. Am I a bad man for thinking it's soooo much better than Roth's lauded American Pastoral? Um, it is. All I remember about AP is a guy named Swede, a bridge, and a barbeque. DA, it's so ... well, misogynistic. But Roth, that's where he shines, isn't it? Kepesh is an a-hole (at least on disc one) but you can smell the pleasure Roth had in writing it. AP felt like a chore, like Roth was putting the pieces where they were expected to be by awards judges. DA is looser. I haven't read the other two Kepesh books (The Breast and The Professor of Desire; I own the latter) but this one's got the goods. Again, 1/4 of the way through.
Kakutani didn't like it, as she found Kepesh unsympathetic, which I'm not sure is all that disappointing to Roth, but Franzen, it makes him mad, it's not fair!!! A.O. Scott, she felt bad for Kepesh, which, hmm, we'll see.
Here's a picture of Roth thinking about writing something that will make you angry, and not caring.
Here's Charlie Brown.
Not perhaps something you'd expect me to link to, but an upcoming reading at Longfellow Books:
Wednesday, May 7th at 7 pm
Stacy Malkan
Author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty IndustryJoin us this Wednesday when author and activist Stacy Malkan will be here to talk about her new book, Not Just a Pretty Face. The event is made possible by a local non-profit organization, the Enviromental Health Strategy Center. Stacy is the communications director of Health Care Without Harm, and in 2002, helped launch the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics after a startling discovery: the presence of industrial chemicals linked to birth defects in 70% of personal products tested (You can read the full report here). She spent a decade as an investigative journalist, and in recent years has been leading the fight to keep dangerous chemicals out of everyday products.
Not Just a Pretty Face is more than just disturbing statistics and unreported dangers. It's also the compelling story of the scientists, politicians, and activists engaged in this ongoing fight, and their struggles and successes. It's even the story of Stacy herself:
"I admit, I was a teenage make-up diva. I had an elaborate morning ritual involving eight types of make-up and multiple hair products, topped off with a generous cloud of Aqua Net Extra Super Hold hair spray. Twenty years later, I learned that my beauty routine was exposing me to 200 chemicals a day, many of them toxic--all before I even left the house to get on the school bus!"
The good news is, all is not lost. Not all companies are using dangerous substances, and thanks to the efforts of people like Stacy Malkan (and some great new resources--check out the Skin Deep Database) consumers can make informed choices about what they put in their bodies. So stop by this Wednesday, and educate yourself. Remember, knowledge is power.
As Dan notes, it's May. How did that happen? I have no idea what, if anything, I'll do for NSSM this year. Dan wrote that we should expect less from him than last year, which sounds like we'll only get two or three short story posts a day from him, instead of six or seven. Because that's what you can produce when you've cloned yourself.
Do you ever get to a place where you don't want any more books? I've got so many unread books, yet there's always something I'm interested in checking out, some new author (for me) whose back catalog is beckoning. It's always 75% "want more books," 25% "that's enough for now."
I won a Powell's gift card the other day, and was looking at my wish list last night, trying to decide what to get before my postage pass expires. And there's good stuff on the list, but I've got good stuff lined up already. I didn't buy anything, and thinking about it, I realized that even with money for new books, there isn't anything I want to spend it on right now.
Should I call the doctor?
I was hesitant about my ARC of Mark Sarvas' Harry, Revised. Sometimes, your host here tends to overthink things and get mired in indecision. What if I think it's crap? Shouldn't I be honest about that? Worse, what if I think it's really great? The last thing I want to read about is some assclown pointing to my thoughts about the book as evidence of book-blog incest. (Is this still a book-blog?) So, to avoid any confusion, let's be clear right up front:
I'm sleeping with Mark Sarvas!*
I finished reading Harry, Revised the other night. Thought it started a bit slow, unsure of the direction it was going to go in, but by the end - and I stayed up late reading the last 75 or so pages - I couldn't help but be appreciative of the work and thought that went into it. I just wrote about Kidd's mishandling of the hard subject matter around Milgram's experiments; Sarvas' challenge isn't to capture the emotion around an experiment, but around a man who has lost his wife. I liked his slow, methodical trip into Harry's eventual collapse - early on, I was one-eyebrow-raised about this guy's extracurricular activities, thinking it "unrealistic" that he'd be doing all these different things when his wife just died. And I know about the stages of grief, about the power of the mind to seal away terribly painful things in strange ways. I just didn't think Sarvas had given us enough, at that early point in the book, to make it seem okay that Harry was doing these things.
Looking back, it all fits together very realistically - Harry's character flaws match up with his hamhanded (at times) attempts at putting one foot in front of the other after a tremendous loss. The difficulties their marriage faced inform the decisions he makes to try and cope, even as he's completely shut off to the entire loss. He's coping with only the slightest indication of what it is he's got to cope with, and that seems only as real and normal as such a loss could get. Plus, the book has genuine funny bits that don't feel like they were shoehorned in, it's got the "crush on the barista/diner waitress/bookstore clerk with the hair and the tattoo, oh my" that I just know (and Mark just knew) you could relate to, it's got ideas on friendship, pugilism, bicycling (shocker, right!) and love, none of which hit you over the head as Big Ideas. So, I liked it. You will, too.
* ...'s book next to my bed. It always takes me a few days to shelve a book after I finish it, longer if I enjoyed it. My side of the bed, they pile up. Twice a year, they all get shelved.
Politics ahoy. If the gas-tax holiday over the summer becomes a reality - and it won't, but if it does - I'm sending the $30 it will save me (and you, and all of you) to the Obama campaign. I didn't want to get this site into politics again, but come on:
Hillary Clinton has now joined John McCain in proposing the most irresponsible policy idea of the year—an idea that actually could aid the terrorists. What's worse, both of them know that suspending the federal gas tax this summer is a terrible pander, and yet they're pushing it anyway for crass political advantage.
Clinton and McCain have learned a destructive lesson from the Bush era: as Bill Clinton said in 2002, it's better politically to be "strong and wrong" than thoughtful and right. The goal is to depict Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist. By any means necessary.
I could highlight a long debate among economists on suspending the gas tax, but there is no debate. Not one respectable economist—and not one environmentalist or foreign policy expert—supports the idea, unless they are official members of the Clinton or McCain campaigns (and even some of them privately oppose it). To relieve suffering at the pump, send another rebate check or provide tax credits or something else, but not this.
On top of everything you can read at that link: as Obama pointed out the other day, it's slight of hand so that McCain - and Bandwagon Hillary - can look tough and concerned. As he also pointed out, for the vast majority of people, the savings will amount to around $30. Which will buy you half a tank of gas. Don't take his word for it, and please don't take my word for it - take every conservative and liberal economist's word for it, because nobody with a calculator should be falling for this crap. If Hillary wants to be known as the candidate for change, this works well, because the gas tax holiday will give you just that. A pocketful of change.
Hillary wants you to know she cares.
I want you to know Hillary is full of shit.
John McCain 2000 would have known better. John McCain 2008, well, whatever works, right?
Chip Kidd's work (as a well-known and talented cover designer) was featured in a collection. He's also written two books: The Cheese Monkeys, and The Learners. I've written here about my appreciation of his covers, but to be honest hadn't felt much interest in his writing. You know - actress turns to singing, singer turns to acting, movie star with great skills turns back to writing poetry/painting/photography after starring in a really big popular series of movies, the usual.
I became interested in the new one right around the time I was turning up the heat on studying for my counseling/psychotherapy exam:
Fresh out of college in the summer of 1961, Happy lands his first job as a graphic designer (okay, art assistant) at a small Connecticut advertising agency populated by a cast of endearing eccentrics. Life for Happy seems to be — well, happy. But when he's assigned to design a newspaper ad recruiting participants for an experiment in the Yale Psychology Department, Happy can't resist responding to the ad himself.
What experiment? This experiment:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[4]
So, did I like it? Yes. I liked the book. But. I liked the humor, but at times felt a little bit like I was stuck in a sitcom. And I was confused by what appeared to be Kidd's disinterest/inability in really digging into the ramifications of the experiment and the effect participation in the experiment had on Happy. I know, he's happy, he's unhappy, he's not feeling like himself, so he's the un-happy. Right, I get it. But considering the moral crisis Kidd wants us to believe Happy is going through, remarkably few words are actually devoted to the crisis, except as asides, reminders that Happy isn't happy. But I didn't want asides mixed in with chuckles; I wanted the experiment to take center stage, because look, Happy, you just fried a dude. Or at least, you thought you did, and thought you had become the sort of person that could do that sort of thing. I didn't want hijinks involving a very large dog name Hamlet wearing shoes as a promotion and then going PG-13 berserk.
But look, that's a minor quibble, no doubt made larger because of my background in this field, my interest in the subject matter. If you're really interested in Milgram's work, you'd be better served elsewhere. I doubtless would have been happier if Happy (sigh) had, after the experiment, endeavored to recreate the experiment over and over and over with paid actors. That's probably just me, though. The takeaway here is that it was an enjoyable enough read, made me laugh, didn't feel like a waste of my time. In all the ways this book could have been spectacularly bungled, my complaint's probably pretty low on the list.
(As a final note, I read an interview with Kidd - I think it was with Birnbaum - in which he indicated yes, he would very much like to see this made into a movie. Which would be good, except too late Shatner beat you to it!)
The Fall catalog's there for your list-making perusal. Me? The Delivery Room, Noir, Flying to America, and - of course - Get Your War On. You?
Okay people, let's talk about good dictionaries. Comment or e-mail me. I want to know what dictionary you recommend, and why. I haven't bought a new dictionary in well over ten years, so I need to shop around. Thanks.
UPDATE ONE: No sooner do I post this, Grant Barrett comprehensively responds! The man moves quickly. However, no actual recommendations, just guidelines, so let me know your favorites.
The best part is her reaction to his question. 82 years old, friends: we should be so lucky. (via)
Funny story: I was at work tonight, talking for a few minutes on the phone with my wife. She asked me if I'd listened to Selected Shorts tonight. No, says I, why? She told me that she put it on to listen to while settling the littlest child into bed, thinking the description of the show sounded nice, with music provided by "some quartet" - but apparently, the music "made (her) ears bleed," was horrible, awful, no-good "sort of Chinese orchestral jazz noise, or something" - and the radio was louder than she'd anticipated, the baby wasn't going to sleep, she couldn't reach the radio to turn it off, and - the worst - "the music made me actually want to listen to the theme music for Maine Things Considered instead." Which, let me tell you, is pret-ty godawful. We had a good laugh.
I just got home a few minutes ago and figured I'd take a quick (ha!) look at Google Reader, and hey, there's tonight's episode of Selected Shorts, all lined up. I open it to see if it says anything about the Earbleed Quartet - and the featured story is by Condalmo friend J. Robert Lennon, he of Ward Six and also Books That Have Been Published On Paper And Read! I'll have to ask her in the morning if she listened to the story. I gleefully anticipate a string of venomous invective toward the Quartet, followed by a no, after which I reveal my tenuous yet genuine connection to the author, to be met with likely-deserved skepticism/disinterest!
Just saw at Maud's that the son will be publishing the father's The Original of Laura. V. Nabokov has provided me with some especially moving reading experiences over the years. So, in gratitude, I'm going to abide by his wishes, which seem to indicate that he did not want it read and that it should be burned (a conclusion I reach by referring to his request to have it burned). Others have made pretty good arguments in favor of publishing/reading it. But (and can you believe I'm dropping the "but" on Borges? Who the hell am I?) I don't think we can know the mind of V.N. - maybe he couldn't burn it himself. Not exactly a wilting flower, that one, but who's to say?
I just think that any intelligent person could think their way into a rationalization of why it should be exposed to the public, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing to do. An intelligent, motivated person can make a case for anything, right? I could make a rational(ish) argument in favor of eating KFC every day, but that shit will kill you dead.
Not that The Original of Laura is in any way equivalent to KFC.
(Or maybe it is, and that's why he wanted it burned. Someone will have to let righteous me know.)
UPDATE: Um.
Mark Sarvas, he of The Elegant Variation, he of Harry, Revised which I finished two nights ago and will write about later (it was good), is on the new(est) episode of Titlepage.
Charlie Rose, by way of Beckett.
Bush's '09 Budget Eliminates RIF Funding
by Kevin Howell -- Publishers Weekly, 4/17/2008 8:08:00 AM
President Bush's proposed 2009 budget eliminates all the funding for Reading Is Fundamental's book distribution program that has, since 1966, provided more than 325 million books to more than 30 million underprivileged children.
"With 13 million children living in poverty in this country, the need for RIF has never been greater," said RIF CEO/president Carol Rasco, The annually funded RIF program is currently approved through September 2009, but if Bush's budget is approved, 4.6 million children will not receive 16 million free books the following year. RIF, the oldest and largest children's and family nonprofit literacy organization in the U.S, has been funded by Congress and six Administrations without interruption since 1975.
"With a recent report showing a declining interest in reading among adults and teens, supporting children's literacy is critical to reversing this trend.," said Rasco.
"We received $26.6 million in federal funding in 2007 and we're requesting $26 million this year," said Frank Walter, RIF's director of marketing/PR, adding that 75% of funds are provided by federal grants and 25% is raised locally by RIF's 19,000 volunteer outlets that distribute books at childcare centers, schools or migrant work programs. Ninety percent of the organization's funds go to purchasing new books for lower income children and for motivational reading activities that take place during RIF's book distribution.
RIF's Web site (www.RIF.org) provides a link for supporters to find their senator and representative and send an email message to them and President Bush in support of continued funding. The appropriation committee will be meeting in May and June to decide on budgets.
James Patterson's recent blog urged fans to visit RIF's site and voice their concerns. "RIF, if you don't know, is one of the pioneers of kid-directed book distribution programs," Patterson wrote. "I've already reached out. Do you think you might take a couple minutes to reach out to your congresspersons? Infusing a love of books in our own kids is challenging enough . . . imagine how hard it is to do in families without our resources and level of education."
This is the second time the Bush administration has tried to cut RIF's funding. Bush's first budget proposal in 2001 originally allotted no money for the organization. "There was an uproar across the country and it was reinstated," said Walter.
Ironically, while President Bush continually overlooks the organization, both his wife and mother have held positions within the organization. Barbara Bush served on RIF's Board of Directors from 1980 to 1988 and then on its National Advisory Board from 1989 to 1992 (chairing the Advisory Board for three of the four years.) Laura Bush served on RIF's National Advisory Council from 1996 to 2001.
We now return to temporarily lurking, hovering, and not posting.
No, not because Condalmo favorite Remainder got eliminated today. (It must be said, though - I thought Wiggins got faint praise, and McCarthy got a bunch of sour grapes. But I enjoy Liberman's Language Log, and appreciate his willingness to part with the book - e-mail me for my address, Mr. Liberman. I'll give that little orphan a good home. Condalmo's the name, Gmail's my game.)
The hiatus is because of my upcoming exam. I don't think I've talked about it much here, but my graduate degree is in clinical counseling (and rehabilitation counseling - largely work around assisting people with disabilities in employment - though my interests fall more in the clinical field) and I've got my licensing exam coming up shortly. Private practice as a therapist (mental health, possibly specializing in elder issues) is the eventual goal. First, the exam, and then we'll see what comes next. So things are going to go quiet - no, really - around here for a while, while I direct my attention to the studies. It's been some time since I was in school, so I want to be thorough in my reviewing.
I'll be checking my e-mail periodically (Mr. Liberman) but will be avoiding fiction, this site, and my Google Reader. Especially the reader. It just ate twenty minutes of my evening. Back, you monster!
Tob 2008 - remaindr eliminated. goodbye cruel world
Tips from the accountant, via his novelist daughter. Probably common sense for everyone except writers, who (in my experience) are rotten with numbers.
You know that funny Web site Stuff White People Like, the one with the jokes? The Canadian guy who runs it just sold a book to Random House for an advance that publishing insiders said had reached at least $350,000 when it was at auction last week. Unclear how high it ended up climbing, but frankly, $350,000 is already a staggering sum for a paperback inspired by a faddish blog that launched just over two months ago...
I'm starting the bidding here at $5. Do I hear $6?
Forthcoming pop-up book of typography. Fun! (via)
A friendly PSA from the staff here at Condalmo: available next Tuesday.
From Dan comes notice that the Litblog Co-Op is shutting down:
The Litblog Co-op is closing down, mainly because so many of its members have become so preoccupied with their own blogs, as well as other literary endeavors that in some cases their blogs helped to make possible, that they could not devote the kind of time and attention required to keep a loosely-affiliated group like the LBC functioning adequately. The LBC was formed with a specific mission to highlight books that weren't being discussed much, or at all, in mainstream book sections by putting the collective authority of the then better-known literary weblogs behind the selection of one book per quarter the group believed was worth readers' attention.
I'd like to take the LBC's dissolution as an opportunity to not only reflect on its success in highlighting such books but also on the evolution of the literary blog from the time (actually only 3-4 years ago) when "literary weblog" seemed merely a peculiar conjunction of words to the present moment, when the litblog has become sufficiently established that numerous print-based critics have attacked literary blogs for encroaching on their territory (the gates to which they apparently intend to keep)...
...which he then does (reflect), and while his observations are interesting, his multiple-use of the word "litblogosphere" is making this site my next stop. Because that word sucks.
It does no good to gripe about any particular judge's decision in the Tournament of Books. Well, okay, it makes us feel better, pointing out why that judge is wrong wrong wrong. But it doesn't change anything. Sarvas attempted to flex his newly developed Author muscle, but needs to go back to the spinach can:
Imagine, then, my shock and dismay to find The Savage Detectives eliminated in the first round. Knowing our hosts’ taste for controversy, I wrote to them and pleaded the merits of jury nullification, so that I could undertake this clash of titans I’d envisioned. Mischief-makers that they are, they were tempted, but finally felt obligated to observe the rules of their own game.
Not tempted at all, according to them; but, justice will be served:
Well, obviously I want to undo the unfathomable wrong of the prior round and advance The Savage Detectives. That’s my real choice.
But since I don’t have the option open, and since neither book excited me as much as last year’s The Road, I’m going to advance Tree of Smoke, on the grounds (as good as any) that in the event that it makes it all the way through to the finals, it is precisely the sort of Big Literary Book that frequently gives Nick Hornby such conniptions in his Believer column, and it will be entertaining to see how he takes to it.
But really: The Savage Detectives.
Which leads one of the Tournament Overlords to nearly "give Judge Sarvas the Dale Peck Pretentious A-Hole of the Tournament award" which would no doubt please Dale Peck as he plots more evildoing from his underground lair. Such drama! I haven't read either of these, though I will admit some underdog appreciation of Vida's work. I do wish for fewer judgments like this one in the future; people want an honest weighing of the merits, not vigilante justice. (Of course, substitute Remainder everywhere you see The Savage Detectives in Mark's decision, and, well, yeah.)
Instead, call them on it, and make media better. Sometimes I joke about "the promise of the internet realized," but this one has potential. I can't wait to see where this goes. (via.)
Full text here.
I have never felt more convinced that this man's candidacy - not this man, his candidacy - and what he can bring us to achieve - is an historic opportunity. This was a testing; and he did not merely pass it by uttering safe bromides. He addressed the intimate, painful love he has for an imperfect and sometimes embittered man. And how that love enables him to see that man's faults and pain as well as his promise. This is what my faith is about. It is what the Gospels are about. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian.
I wrote previously about the difficulty in writing good fiction involving dreams - it can come off so very badly. Derek White, he of Calamari Press (Good, Brother, the excellent Part of the World, among others) has his first novel coming later this year. I asked if he would share, as part of Small Press Month. Here's an excerpt - a dream sequence.
The Adjoining Room at the Calico Hotel
Marie-Yves and I went to “get a room.” When we arrived at the hotel the lobby was full of cats—orange tabbies that all appeared to be related. One in particular, with tear-duct markings like a cheetah, rode with us in the elevator. It had some sort of nerve disorder that rewired its intentions. If it tried to jump to the right, it jumped to the left. If it tried to jump up, it slunk to the ground. This cat had learned to make do by always thinking the opposite of what it wanted to do, so by not trying to get in the elevator with us, it ended up in the elevator. Initially I thought by the way the cat was rubbing against me that it truly wanted to ride up with us, until I realized it might be rubbing my leg against its will, and that it in it’s heart it truly despised us.
I was embarrassed because I was the one that had suggested this hotel to Marie-Y, who by this time (judging by the ruby ring on her finger that evidently she had received from me) had become my fiancée. The cat tried to rub against her leg but fell in the opposite direction away from her.
“I’m sorry,” I kept saying.
“Don’t worry about it,” she kept saying back, touching my elbow. “There’s nothing you can do.” Then Marie-Y started rubbing against me with increasing intensity.
When we got to our floor the hall was full of identical calicos. They all got out of our way as we approached like a sea of cat molecules parting. They bowed down on their front paws in perfect unison and avoided eye contact. The orange cat with the nerve disorder and tear-duct markings remained in the elevator as the doors closed behind us.
“Sorry if this is weird for you,” I said.
“Don’t worry. It’s putting me in the mood.”
Our room key said ‘habitation 16-28-13,’ but all the doors had X’s or Y’s on them. The room at the end had a bank vault door with a combination lock.
“Ah-hah,” I realized. “Maybe it’s not the room number, but the combination.” There was a funny smell coming from under the door, making me reluctant to even try it. One of the cats lifted its tail and sprayed on the door, effectively counteracting the smell.
“We’re rich!” yelled Marie-Y. She hugged me and I accidentally kissed her on the lips thinking she was coming to kiss me, not realizing that the custom here was to kiss to either side on the cheek. Marie-Y kept kissing me back, on the lips, and then with an open mouth and I reciprocated. She tasted like she had eaten an orange, or some orange-flavored candy.
“Why?” I asked, after we had finished kissing.
“The Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle will pay 10,000 euros to anyone that finds a male calico.” When we looked down, the cat had mixed in with the others.
“They all look the same to me.”
“Only one of them is a male, with an XXY chromosome instead of XY.”
“How will we be able to tell?”
“By lifting their tails and checking.”
When we walked toward the cats, they kept sweeping just out of our reach. Marie-Y got down on all fours, meowing like she was one of them—thinking the male might act differently toward her. No such luck.
We woke up in bed together, which reminded me I was still sleeping and had yet to meet Marie-Yves.
Rourke's top ten books about boredom. He gives the nod to Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, coming in at number three:
Those perfectly empty moments when we find ourselves waiting for absolutely nothing, until it's time to walk back to work or back to our homes for the evening. Pessoa's entire philosophical study of boredom is possibly the greatest poem ever written.
This sounds interesting:
The mindnumbingly boring routine of office life is examined in this perceptive novel of alienation. Much darker and philosophically damning than Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End, Michael Bracewell points us towards the futile accessories of the modern office: spider plants, polystyrene cups, suspension files, print outs and trips to sandwich shops between 1 - 2 in the afternoon. Bored people trying to find their foothold, their superior position, within the meaningless politics of the office. It is a novel that offers the proof we need that most of us are bored without even realising it.
Is a list of ten not exciting enough for you? Rourke kicks it up a notch. I'd add The Moviegoer...
A quiet evening, me blithely reading an article, half remembrance and half review, of those blue covered Hardy Boys books. Fond childhood reading memories all around. When:
One of the high points of my Hardy Boy reading days (fifth and sixth grade) was when my father’s cousin gave me all his old Hardy Boy books, which were in fact old books. He’d inherited most of them from an older cousin himself and these were all originals from the 1920s and 30s. I had collected about a dozen of the newer, blue-spined books by then, my dad’s cousin’s collection included seven or eight brown-covered ones with actual grown-up book style paper dust jackets from the 1950s, so my suddenly increased collection included about a dozen more of the originals and I could tell the difference. For one thing, they were better written. Oh sure, they included their fair share of Tom Swiftys and Frank and Joe never just said anything. They exclaimed, they enthused, they whispered, they called out, they ejaculated, a lot, and as soon as I learned that word’s other meaning I wondered if Franklin.W. Dixon employed it so often because he was trying to be funny or because he was a little bit strange. (It wasn’t until I stopped reading the books that I learned that there was no one person writing the books named Franklin.W. Dixon.)
Um, what?
(It wasn’t until I stopped reading the books that I learned that there was no one person writing the books named Franklin.W. Dixon.)
Okay, I'm never reading anything ever again ever. Goodbye, sweet innocence. Today, I am a man.
UPDATE: ...
"That man leaving here is certainly excited," said Joe Hardy to his older brother Frank as they looked out of their second story bedroom window and watched a mysterious man leave their home.
"Yes. And he only visited with Dad for a few minutes," exclaimed Frank. "He certainly came and went very quickly."
Next you'll be telling me that the Master was in love with the Doctor. Leave my dorky childhood alone! (via)
Richard bravely brings Snoop Dogg and Marcel Proust in on the same post. (And Everlast.) Joke lead from me, ha ha, but it's an interesting comment on the rare occurrence of all the right elements falling into place with creativity. Excerpt:
I think we get so caught up in evaluation and assessment and moving on to the next big thing (or the next small thing) that we too rarely stop to consider how amazing artistic creation is. I commented to Tom's post that "the line between something awesome being created and not is that vanishingly thin." This is probably true to the point of banality, but at times I ponder it, in something like astonishment. When listening to a song, one that seems just so, and yet comprised, perhaps, of what might have otherwise seemed like incongruous elements, I sometimes become forcefully aware of how easily it could have been otherwise.
Not banal; just rare, that someone appreciates that magic. We take for granted that we live in an age and country that are more geared toward entertainment than nearly anything.
I like the New York Times, but having Garrison Keillor write a take-down "review" of a book written in praise of melancholy - I'm reaching for the right metaphor here, but failing. Let's just call it an article - by a "humorist" upon whose "popularity" rests on people turning that frown upside down - taking snide potshots at someone who doesn't think Shiny Happy Everything is all there is. Doesn't make for valuable reading.
Better is this article (Why the dumb title? Why filed under fashion instead of, um, home & garden?) about the next generation of people and farming. You know: where food comes from. Local turnaround Broadturn Farm gets a mention. Hurrah for CSA!
Finally, on not being reassured:
The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance. Our credit markets are foundering, and all we’ve got is a guy who looks like he’s ready to kick back and start the weekend. ...this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”
Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.
Housekeeping: the two Google search bars have been discontinued, as they appeared to be completely useless. Lijit's been brought back in to fill the void.
Also, if you like that Condalmo feeling, please Stumble on me. (There's also a button for this, there on the right.) Your Stumbles will do something good, somewhere. Thank you.
Brandon does the heavy lifting and calls it for McCarthy.
I never thought I'd find a way to work that quote into a valid & related subject header. God bless you, my friend. From "What Are You Going to Do, Bleed On Me?":
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (a decrepit and anachronistic organization if ever there was one) defines a professional short story publication as three cents a word, a laughable figure which hasn't changed in decades. As for "literary" short fiction, the number of publications which pay decent rates for it can be counted on the fingers of one hand -- The New Yorker, Harpers, Playboy, Esquire, and once a year the Atlantic Monthly. Did I forget anyone? On the other hand there are an ever increasing abundance of "literary magazines" with circulations in three or even two digits, published by universities or the equivalent of two guys in a garage. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but it's incredibly obvious that today having a "career" in writing short fiction and reaching out to a large audience on a regular basis simply isn't possible.
Let's be clear: I like short stories and I both read and write them. But we wouldn't need a Save the Short Story campaign if it wasn't in trouble. Let us not play pretend, let us not close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears and make believe the art form that once provided an income for a multitude of professionals isn't becoming (or hasn't become) irrelevant to the population at large. The short story is not a healthy art form, but rather a once mighty appendage of the greater literary body that's been gradually severed off and reduced until all that remains is a single lonely ligament, desperately clinging for all its worth.
Thus the Monty Python Black Knight reference that follows. And thus my subject. What is it, exactly, that we're all doing wrong? Depending on how you look at the form, and the criteria you then choose for whether it's "healthy" or "smells like someone died" (yes!), it's easy to argue. More people writing stories? Check, or at least probably check. Fewer "big" magazines paying good coin for the stories? Check. More "garage" magazines publishing stories? Check. Double digit subscriber lists? Check. Back and forth we go.
But it's hard to get around the fact that many fewer collections of stories come out each year than novels, and that those story collections rarely see the same sort of sales numbers as even your midlist literary fiction authors. Why? Why didn't The Dead Fish Museum sell like mad? It's excellent, through and through. What is it about stories that don't make you reach for your wallets? Do we blame the publishers, with misguided/lackluster marketing? Because: if you want to reach a population not interested in choosing reading over more immediate, short-attention-span-supporting pastimes, wouldn't a short story be a good start? We can also blame ourselves: what did you buy more of last year? What can you find more of, for free, on the internet? Why are we making it available for free? Nobody sensible will read all of Beautiful Children in a PDF file, but a three to five page story? Absolutely. Nearly all of the new stories in a new collection (of old and new stuff) forthcoming can be found in various places online, either right there or lodged in a Google cache. There's the entire "maybe" audience gone; all that's left is the hard core dudes that would buy the thing anyway.
Anyway, this is leading nowhere in particular, except that I simultaneously feel that pain and am disgusted by it; I wish short stories would become popular, but like you, am standing around bleeding.
Dan links to this piece on Stephen Dixon, part of which I offer here as anticipation builds for the arrival (via Bookmooch) of Dixon's favorite book. This excerpt: on his style, and on what may be the only book I'm afraid to read:
That’s because what he’s really writing about, often, is memory—how we reconstruct past events in our minds, how those reconstructions are at odds with how other observers recall the events, how our fantasies overlap and occasionally supplant what actually happened. I can’t count the number of Dixon passages that begin with the protagonist sorting through how a pivotal event occurs, only to have a wife or a brother or a friend proclaim his memory faulty and then proceed to argue with him about how it happened this way.
Dixon explores infinite alternatives to a situation and the contours of a person’s life. He’s the writer as cubist. In a story, he’ll look at a person’s situation or actions in as many different ways as possible. Interstate (1995), an entire novel based on the seemingly random murder of one of his daughters during a drive on the interstate , takes this idea to the nth degree. Each long chapter looks at the basic event—the protagonist is driving on the interstate, with his young daughters in the backseat, when a passenger in another car makes a rude gesture at the protagonist and suddenly fires bullets into the protagonist’s car, hitting the youngest daughter in the chest and killing her.
That in itself is harrowing to consider. What Dixon does with the material, however, is even more excruciating. Each of the book’s chapters examines the event from a different perspective.
I think Dixon's best stuff (that I've read thus far) is when he works around a specific loss - Old Friends, Phone Rings (made me wish I'd had a brother), and Interstate is highly spoken of and was nominated for some award or another. I, End of I, both good, but meandering - ? And I couldn't finish Meyer.
I remember reading somewhere that his next one's going to look at his wife leaving him. Melville House?
This book is not about old-people sex. My apologies to grandparents everywhere.
(Still, though. Really.)
Start here. There's a movie coming, but it's a ways off, so you have time to watch all three seasons.
I don't know that I agree with the idea that Murakami is difficult to read (the person, or his books) but of interest anyway:
...Set against both Meehan’s tame realism and Gaddis’s comically absurd satire is “The Elephant Vanishes,” by Haruki Murakami, the only author under discussion whom I can imagine being happy at a real demolition derby. The story is trademark Murakami, in that it’s a fantastic story told matter-of-factly, and the result is unsettling. In the first half, the narrator concentrates almost tediously on how the elephant came to be where it was, and the aftermath of its disappearance. Only in the second half, when he tells the story to a young woman he’s flirting with, do we learn that he was the last person, aside from the keeper, to see the elephant before it disappeared. We also learn that it might have vanished by growing small enough to shrug off the iron ring that bound its leg and then slip between the bars of its cage. What’s not clear is whether we can trust the narrator’s perception (he doubts it himself), but the only way the elephant’s disappearance can be explained is to accept the impossible, a recognition that has subtly affected him. “Some kind of balance inside of me has broken down since the elephant affair,” he says, “and maybe that causes external phenomena to strike my eye in a strange way.” Telling the story to the young woman, for example, turns out to be a mistake, for its strangeness casts a pall over their attraction, and he never sees her again. Meehan might have enjoyed Murakami’s story, being the author of the hilarious “Yma Dream” from February 24, 1962. (It's best heard aloud; you can watch Anne Bancroft perform it here.) But Gaddis would’ve had no patience with the stubborn fantasy at the heart of “The Elephant Vanishes.” Still, Gaddis is famously difficult to read, which is something he shares with Murakami. Anne Keesey published an interview with Murakami in The Oregonian, in 2002, in which she reported,
It's tempting to try to assign specific meaning to Murakami's odder images. What is the meaning of the sheep in The Wild Sheep Chase? What is the underwater volcano in The Second Bakery Attack? What is the flatiron in Landscape with Flatiron? But perhaps sheep, volcano and iron cannot be decoded in that way. These images may be the irreducible coin of Murakami's individual imagination, not symbols of something else ...
Murakami responded to a question about the meaning of the underwater volcano by saying, "Don't you see a volcano in your mind when you get hungry? I do."
Which makes me think Murakami knows a thing or two about conversation-stoppers...
Or, failing that, maybe he points at something behind you with a look of astonishment, and when you look to see what it is, he runs off.
Via Amitava Kumar's site: Francine Prose, PEN President, has sent the following letter to PEN members. There's a link below. You can also go here.
I am writing to ask each and every one of you to stand up and be counted in support of our campaign to free 38 writers and journalists from prison in China.
As part of our We Are Ready for Freedom of Expression campaign, PEN American Center will be delivering a petition to the Chinese Consulate in New York on April 30, 2008–100 days before the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies–requesting the release of our jailed colleagues and seeking an end to internet censorship and other restrictions on freedom of expression in China. We want to make sure the name of every single member of PEN American Center is included among the thousands of signatures we are gathering for this petition.
If you have not already done so, please take a moment right now to sign this petition: www.pen.org/chinapetition
Your efforts will make a difference. Since the launch of this campaign on December 10, 2007, four writers and journalists have been released from Chinese prisons.
If you would like to do more, also sign our parallel petition to United States Congress to prohibit U.S. internet companies from helping China censor the internet and jail cyber-dissidents. Visit our campaign page at: www.pen.org/china
With your help and the help of all who support literature and freedom to write, we will free many more of our jailed colleagues before the Olympic Games begin.
Spitzer's having a really bad month. Your Tournament of Books update:
tournament-fashion. She gave a rational enough explanation, more so than we've received from certain other judges in other years. I haven't read either of these books yet, but Bolano's elimination certainly levels the playing field for everyone else. Why all the fuss? (Of course, if "That Strange Old Person Smell" takes down "Number One Existential Superbook", you'll see a real protest.)
