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May 13, 2008

The New York Times is the only publication that likes James Frey's new novel, as far as I can tell. (They'll have a review in a week or so, directly contradicting Maslin's positive review. At least that's my guess.) The LA Times does not pull any punches: "Bright Shiny Morning is a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read."

I know what a friend of mine would say in response to these pictures of an abandoned library in Russia: "That looks like your apartment." (Link from Journalista.)

Author! Author! has an episode called "Pulp Fiction": they have Nelson Algren reading from Chicago, City on the Make, Studs Terkel talking about Algren and why he's not considered part of the canon (it's the fault of the New York literary "stranglers"), Tom Wolfe discussing The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Chris Ware, once again talking about how pathetic he is.

You can watch a Chris Ware cartoon from This American Life here.

Irish journalist and author Nuala O'Faolain died May 9 in Dublin of lung cancer at the age of 68.

A radio and television broadcaster, O'Faolain was well known as an opinion columnist for The Irish Times even before her first memoir, Are You Somebody?, made her a best-selling author.

RTE has O'Faolain's last interview on their website. (Thanks to Richard for the link.)

May 12, 2008

Bookslut's Indie Heartthrob Interview Series

A weekly interview series where someone involved in the small press (be it writer, editor, slush slave, etc.) is thrown into the spotlight, grilled over the state of the independents and sundry other items, and quickly made to return from whence they came after having graced us all with their presence.

This Week: Steven Gillis

Steven Gillis is the founder and publisher at Dzanc Books, a not-for-profit based out of Michigan, as well as 826 Michigan. His novels Walter Falls and The Weight of Nothing were both finalists for the Independent Publishers Book of the Year and ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year in 2003 and 2005. His newest novel, Temporary People, was recently published by Black Lawrence Press. All the proceeds from Steve's writing helps keep Dzanc afloat.

What is Dzanc about? What is its mission statement?

Dzanc is about great writing. Dzanc is about helping writers and supporting writers and proving to the world that great books can be sustained by a well read community, and we needn't have our book markets taken over by the crap that appears on bestseller lists and certain larger houses who are intent on pandering to sub-standard books in order to meet the bottom line. Our mission statement and further information can be found on our website.

Dzanc is also about community. Our charity arm–the workshops we run and programs we present to students–is essential to our philosophy and identity.

When did you found Dzanc, and what was your motivation?

Dzanc Books was founded in 2006. Less than a year later, in an article appearing in Publisher's Weekly, Dzanc Books was declared "the future of publishing." We're pretty damn proud of that quote and my partner, Dan Wickett, actually has it tattooed to his forehead. Our motivation was to bring the best writing out there to a new audience. We knew there were many great writers being ignored and we wanted to show that an independent house could get behind great writing and actually make a difference. We also wanted to expose students to books and writing in a way they might not normally get in the course of their school days.

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I don't know how long ago, a year maybe, we accidentally deleted a portion of our sidebar and while rebuilding it made the mistake of putting the RSS feed for the magazine side of the website where the blog RSS feed should be. I just now figured this out. After about ten people e-mailed telling me this. I just kept thinking, "What the hell are they talking about? It's fine." I apologize for being an idiot. The link to the RSS feed now actually works.

Tao Lin provides the soundtrack to his new poetry collection Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy at Largehearted Boy.

I am spending way too much time reading The Stork Didn't Bring You, a sex ed guide from the 1940s that is available online. Other than a confusing bit about how if you bump your chest your breasts won't grow as large (so that's what happened...), it's kind of fantastic. I'm on the "Sex Conscious and Self Conscious" chapter, wherein Lois Pemberton discusses "wolves" who try to get in your pants to fill the void in their cold black hearts, as well as women who refuse to wear feminine clothing and have real jobs and spend all their time with male friends. "She should not be condemned for it."

Americans are finally getting James Meek's We Are Now Beginning Our Descent and I stayed up way past my bedtime reading my copy last night. I looked for an online excerpt, but all I could find were two sad little paragraphs on Meek's website. Meek needs a new website. So instead, here is Meek's review of Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater for the London Review of Books.

A man who hires a squad of elite lawyers to fight to protect his company from liability for anyone’s death, foreign or American, anywhere overseas, despite at least one incident of Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq shooting dead an innocent man; despite the death in Fallujah of four Blackwater mercenaries to whom the company hadn’t given proper armoured vehicles, manpower, weapons, training, instructions or maps; despite the death of three US servicemen in Afghanistan at the hands of a reckless Blackwater aircrew, who also died: well, casual observers might think this would render Erik Prince a villain. Yet it would make him a villain only in some liberal, humanistic, ethical sense. In the eyes of American law, Prince has done nothing villainous; on the contrary, he is a patriot and a Christian, which is to say, a good man.

Lynda Barry's What It Is comes out this week, and it's based on her writing workshops. The New York Times has an audio slideshow of Barry's process of turning a class into a book.

May 09, 2008

The Atlantic has video of Ta-Nehisi Coates discussing his memoir The Beautiful Struggle.

Salon reviews Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange, which besides having cover art with a giant sea creature eating a man (awesome), gives a revisionist history of the settling of North America. It turns out not many people knew Coronado went through Kansas. Really? Kansans knew that. But Kansas History class needed a lot of filler, so they told us everything they could think of. Coronado, then a little mumbling about bloody genocide, something about sod houses, then skip to the Civil War when it gets interesting again, and then Amelia Earhart.

But if your early American history is deficient, Lee Miller's Roanoke gives a lot of information about the early English settlements, and the clashing with the existing Spanish settlements in Florida.

I just managed to find this, but Christina Nehring puts into words why I never read the Best American Essays collections.

Reading the Best American Essays from 1986 to 2006, it’s tempting to create a composite portrait of the Preferred American Essayist: Educated at Harvard, he or she has spent significant time at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, written proposals for New York Public Library Fellowships (often lovingly paraphrased in the essays) and received medical attention at Sloan Kettering Hospital. Chances are good she’s a doting dog owner who has done such things as lace her pet’s dinner with “Prozac, Buspar, Elavil, Effexor, Xanax, and Clomicalm” (Cathleen Shine, 2005) or write gourmet cookbooks for his discerning palate (Susan Orlean, 2005 and 2006). More likely than not, he (if it is a he) has had a lifelong love affair with fishing or baseball, preferably both. An added bonus is to discover—or at least reassess—a Jewish ancestor in one’s family tree.

Where in the world is Schiller's skull? DNA tests prove that a skull venerated by many literature lovers as the "brainbox" of 18th-century German dramatist Friedrich Schiller actually sat atop the shoulder's of a very different man, a German official said. (Via Paul Vermeersch.)

Danielle Pafunda has posted the first half of a long interview with Arielle Greenberg about "the Gurlesque" in contemporary culture: There’s an interesting relationship to irony here: My generation (Gen X) was known for being cynical and glib, but I think a lot of what seemed posturing nostalgia—the way riot grrls, for example, carried kiddie lunchboxes—was an actual longing for the (complicated) promise of a 70s childhood, which itself was overshadowed by our parents’ cynicism, Watergate, Vietnam, the recession, etc. I think perhaps the reasons we return to these images from girlhood have to do with a longing for sincerity, for passion.

Bookslut favorite Tao Lin has a new book of poems out, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and a promotional blog to go with it. There's a trailer, movie reviews, and "every page edited 'half-assedly' into haikus."

Lewis Turco reflects on the 40th anniversary of The Book of Forms.

"Fauxhemia: The Same Old Same Old New York School": Meanwhile, Language Poetry distinguished itself as the slowest art movement ever. It took 20 years to get off the ground. Theory-heavy, they should have called it Talk Poetry. In it, politics is defined as ineffectual insurrection, yack attacks meant to land university jobs.

David Yezzi is interviewed in Men's News Daily about Azores: most poetry is utterly forgettable. Sometimes I forget it even before I’ve finished reading it.

Romeo & Juliet in Hades. (Via the International Exchange for Poetic Invention.)

David Whyte encourages executives to . . . quote more poetry: "In many ways, poetry is about making you more dangerous again, and re-creating a kind of innocence you've had all along," Whyte said.

Reviewing the new biography of Isaac Rosenberg: But he was surely the world's worst soldier. Bullied for his stature - he enlisted in the Bantams, a unit to accommodate short men - he endured with remarkable fortitude and his letters home are models of stoicism and humane humour.

May 08, 2008

I once heard a woman say that she did not consider Simone de Beauvoir a feminist because of her tangled affair with Sartre. Dumbest shit ever. (Forgive me, I still have a cold, so not enough oxygen is getting to my brain.) As if your romantic suffering erases your entire (monumental) body of work. Feminists make bad decisions in love, too. Tarts on reality shows are not the only ones. Carole Seymour Jones talks to the Telegraph about her biography of de Beauvoir and Sartre, A Dangerous Liaison.

Shalom Auslander in praise of anger:

It's been a difficult fifteen years. It would have been easier to find someone who would tell me I need to get rid of my anger, encourage me to get over it, help me to move on. It would have been easier to go to the local bookstore, buy some self-help books, and hurry home to enjoy my shiny new non-anger and my shiny new Love and my shiny new hard-on.

But where would we be if Beckett had bought The Anger Busting Workbook? If Vonnegut had bought The Anger Habit Workbook? If Flannery O'Connor had bought The Anger Workbook for Christians?

"Where are all the bicycle novels?"

And with that, it is revealed that the Guardian blog has officially run out of ideas.

I remember the days when I thought Steve Almond just wrote pretty decent, dirty short stories. But now...

In an attempt to help its readers “cut through the clutter” of the 24,000 cookbooks published each year, Gourmet magazine is launching the Gourmet Cookbook Club, which will select one book a month.

This coming from a magazine that gave a good review to that Rocco DiSpirito cookbook. It is pretty, yes, but you can't make a damn thing from it without a staff of ten. Most of their reviews make you believe they looked at the photography, scanned through a few recipes and decided, "There's absolutely nothing in here that will cause an explosion when mixed together, so it must be okay." Or maybe they're doing it so you know exactly which cookbook will leave you on the kitchen floor, sobbing into your souffle dish. I'm suddenly suspicious of their first pick, Fish Without a Doubt.

May 07, 2008

Penguin Classics is bringing Dorothy Parker's play The Ladies of the Corridor back into print. They have an audio interview with Parker from 1958 about the play.

"What's all this stuff about an old chemist who wonders if his secretary is having a wank?" she asks. "If it hadn't been my son, I wouldn't read that kind of crap, I would put it down straight away, because if there's one thing I detest in the world it's pornography. That book is pure pornography, it's repugnant, it's crap. I don't understand its success at all, that just shows the decadance of France." In her own book, she speculates that he writes about sex because he doesn't get enough. "What's this moronic literature?! Houellebecq is someone who's never done anything, who's never really desired anything, who never wanted to look at others. And that arrogance of taking yourself as superior ... Stupid little bastard. Yes, Houellebecq's a stupid little bastard, whether he's my son or not."

Happy Mothers Day, y'all.

Bookslut's Official Crush Andrew O'Hagan talks to Nigel Beale about winning the LA Times award for Be Near Me, what he thinks of the new Martin Amis, and using art to escape tragedy.

Princeton University Press has recalled all copies of one of its spring titles after discovering more than 90 spelling and grammar errors in the 245-page work.

Richard Morgan has won the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award for Black Man, which was released in the US as Thirteen, where Morgan also picks up the compulsory SF middle initial (K).

The Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Festival is quite conveniently the home of the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year. Go here to vote for the winner and wonder at the preponderance of lightbulbs on covers. British crime: still gloomy.

The brand spanking new Australian-Asian Literary Award is going to be worth $110,000, which in lit award pissing contest terms, puts it in league with the Man Booker. And Keno. Two of the three judges have been appointed: Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie and the charming Nury Vittachi. While they hustle up no. 3 judge and an Australian politician spouts some piffle about "the power to excite and expand the State's cultural horizons," Lee Siegel just heard that it's accepting text-message entries and is in need of a defibrillator. Chillax, Lee, this is what's gonna win.

Thanks for everyone's sore throat remedies. Some of them worked, and some of them just made me drunk. Although I do appreciate having a new excuse for drinking whiskey at 10 am: It's medicinal! (I once asked a farmer I had been staying with for some cold medicine. He replied, "Ah, fuck that, what you need is a hot whiskey." When I finished my hot whiskey, he asked if I could breathe yet. I could not. He handed me another. And so on. I woke up 15 hours later, very well rested, but still unable to breathe.)

In other news! Reading Jane Austen leads to a disappointing sex life.

The Mister Darcy Delusion is the notion, popularized by the early 19th century author Jane Austen, that the smug asshole who calls you fat at the party is really just a misunderstood studmuffin held in by early 19th century social conventions who will turn into Colin Firth if you give him a chance. Well chicas, Jane Austen died a spinster (thank you, Anne Hathaway) and it's the 21st century, and if he looks like a prick and he talks like a prick and he walks like a prick, well, chances are you've had sex with him.

May 06, 2008

Sticky Pages

I’ve been thinking about cheating lately. About that term. I don’t know that one ever ponders cheating, like one ponders buying a new bicycle or what to do if that lottery ticket pays off. I think cheating happens in a moment. One moment you aren’t. And the next moment you are. And come on. We have all done it.

I’ve met a few people who have boasted that they have never cheated and I think, give it time. Like a week. And others who hide it and then blow up when it all comes to the surface. And there are most who will lie and lie and lie and lie and lie, even when the proof is right in front of them. I think about the whole idea of it. Why I’ve done it. How I’ve reacted to it when others have cheated on me. I hate the idea of someone cheating on me. Not someone having sex with another, but the language of it -- that something is being done to me or on me. To be very precise, nothing at all is being done to me. Rather things are being done to other people.

I roll this around all the time and marvel at how many relationships end because someone has cheated. How cheating is, in our culture, the very worst thing one can do in a relationship. Why is that?

So today’s Sticky Pages is not a sex scene, but rather a paragraph about sex that I think is particularly thought-provoking. It’s from the collection of essays, The Bitch in the House, which is a pretty good collection, except some of the stories are written under pseudonyms, which I don’t think is cool. I mean if you’re going to write something you think is controversial, but it’s a way you choose to live, then write about it under your own name. Give this thing some credibility, would you? Don’t just contribute to whatever it is that makes you want a pseudonym.

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There's a novel I'm pretending does not exist. The book is so mind numbingly sexist, it's hard to deal with the fact that only one review I've read thus far (in my lapses of pretending it doesn't exist) has mentioned this fact. In my efforts today to pretend, I will simply rewatch this interview with Brian Eno, talking about Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Barry Lyndon. It will clear my mind and make me feel the world is okay again. Brian Eno: musical genius, author, and fantastic dresser. (Thanks to EJ for the link, who knows how I love my bald, British, purple-shirt-wearing men.)

I've been chewing on raw garlic and gargling vinegar in an attempt to get rid of a sore throat, so let's be thankful that blogging technology cannot transmit smell, shall we?

Let us also be thankful that those of us who do not live in Austria, do not live in Austria. Between the daughter-raping, dungeon-building psychopath Fritzl and John Leake's book Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer, Chicago is looking slightly less scarily violent this spring. You can watch the trailer for Entering Hades here. It's the story of how to truly make a name for yourself in journalism: just create the murders you cover.

This week's Guardian Digested Read: Breakfast at the Wolsley by A A Gill.

There are few things quite as xenophobic as breakfast. Apart from me.

The book world has a billion unnecessary awards, so why not the magazine world as well? Introducing "the American Magazine Vanguard Awards (AMVA's), which recognize both big and small innovators: magazines that are taking new, smart, necessary risks in extending their franchises off the page."

I'm reading Maryanne Wolff's Proust and the Squid, and her explanation of what dyslexia is is kind of fascinating. In the Wall Street Journal, Robert Lee Holtz explains why someone who is dyslexic in Chinese may not be dyslexic in English, and vice versa.

May 05, 2008

Bookslut's Indie Heartthrob Interview Series

A weekly interview series where someone involved in the small press (be it writer, editor, slush slave, etc.) is thrown into the spotlight, grilled over the state of the independents and sundry other items, and quickly made to return from whence they came after having graced us all with their presence.

This Week: Nick Sumida

I'm going to be blunt: Nick is my roommate. I've known him for quite a while now, and I had the opportunity to watch him refine his work as a cartoonist. He recently put out a new zine called Broken Piñata (if you have the means, pick it up. Seriously. Read it.), and he has much more in store this summer. Check out his work at Doggy Hey Light Comix. While you're at it, go ahead and contact him through the comment feature on his blog for a copy of Broken Piñata. The uptight can just email him.

You just put out a new zine called Broken Piñata. How far back in your career does this cover?

The Broken Piñata zine basically collects some of the work I've done in school from 2007 and 2008. I've made a lot of zines in the past, but this is the first collection of work I'm really proud of. It's sort of jarring to think of it as the beginning of my career in that respect, because I still think of myself as a student trying to figure out what I want to do. When the word career enters the equation for me, it's like the scary real world is that much closer.

How do you think the zine movement is helping young artists like yourself?

I think the zine movement is great for young artists in that it's void of the third party editorial process and forces you to be resourceful. I think people can be really creative when working around limits, like having a low budget and only two hands to put things together. It's a really personal and earnest way for someone to share their work with their peers, publishers, and the public. Also, since there's so much out there, it's a real challenge to stand out, so you see a lot of people incorporating strange design elements or, say, paper made out of bald eagle feathers or something. For me, the zine movement also provides a gradual way to get used to letting my work go and feeling gratified with people seeing it.

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In the past [Dave Sim] has been pretty open about exchanging viewpoints and debating, but this latest piece is just damn weird. He is requesting that if you want to correspond with him, you must agree that he is not a misogynist. (Link from Journalista.)

Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Dylan, discusses her father at the Guardian.

Speaking of Philip Whalen, PennSound has an audio archive of Whalen's readings beginning in 1963.

Reading Elizabeth Bachner's feature in this month's issue of Bookslut, "Plathophilia: Rereading Sylvia," made me wish I had read Sylvia Plath as a young girl. The very limited library at my school had no copies of The Bell Jar or Ariel -- I'm pretty sure there was no poetry past Tennyson at all. (It should probably be against the law to not stock copies of Plath's work at high schools and colleges.) By the time I picked up Ariel, I think I was in my early 20s, and it was during that stage of life when Plath is hopelessly uncool. By then we women should be reading INTELLECTUAL material (read as: stuff written by men), and get beyond all that icky, feminine dreariness that Plath represented. It was like admitting you listened to Tori Amos past the age of 16. Bachner, however, makes me want to dig up my copy of Ariel and spend the rest of the day reading it.

"There are stereotypes about Sylvia Plath fangirls -- that we’re mired in middle-class existential woe. That we wear black and chain smoke Gitanes and have eating disorders and skulk around in dark corners, nursing our Electra complexes for our suburban dads. Mostly, that we are teenagers, and that we write unforgivably bad teenage poetry."

Elsewhere in the new issue, Sean P. Carroll talks to Siri Hustvedt about The Sorrows of an American, writing from the perspective of a man, and being a phenomenologist. Everyone at Bookslut is still head over heels over the Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, and Richard Wirick remembers a reading he attended in 1973. Aaron Shulman talks to Stephen Amidon about works in progress, coming of age as a writer in London, and the new role authors play in the publishing industry.

We also have interviews with J'Lyn Chapman and Amy Knox Brown; Barbara J. King finds some spirits in a work of ethnography. There are reviews of new works by Claire Keegan, Michele Roberts, Jim Krusoe, David Samuels, Janice Erlbaum, Aleksandr Skidan and more.

Guess the Ondaatje - not the Prize winner (that would be Graham Robb with his exhilarating history The Discovery of France), but the award namesake. It's not Michael, but Sir Christopher: multi-millionaire publisher, philanthropist, author and champion bobsledder. Please send in any other literary Ondaatjes you have to the usual address. (No responsibility accepted for any damage caused in handling).

The Cervantes Prize medal, Spain's leading literary accolade, has been awarded to Argentinian poet Juan Gelman. Gelman, a former political exile who once fought with a guerrilla group in the '70s against the Argentine dictatorship, was praised by Spain's King Juan Carlos for his "extraordinary, moving and unforgettable" work.

I daren't speculate as to what responsibilities a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America takes on, but it's safe to assume that they first beat out other writers in hand-to-hand combat and pledge allegiance upon a vintage Cornell Woolrich paperback. Bill Pronzini, whose newest Nameless novel is out later this month, was inducted into their number at the recent 2008 Edgar Awards. The Edgar for Best Novel went to John Hart for Down River, while the 2008 Best First Novel is Tara French's Into the Woods.

The rest of the Edgars in full:

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From Fry & Laurie: If Rupert Murdoch had never been born.

May 02, 2008

We asked Cathie Bleck to talk a bit about her cover painting for Amy Irvine's Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land. As I'm dealing with technical problems today, I figured I'd leave you with her reaction to Irvine's book. I'll see you on Monday.

I had the privilege of working with one of the best book designers in the business, Susan Mitchell, who discovered my work through my recent artist monograph, “Open Spaces.” She sent me a one inch stack of picture references from Utah with about 20 images per page and some shots of the author. I also did a bit of research on my own, once I had read the piece. She gave me a good deal of freedom and the parameters were to do art that would wrap around to the backside, leave enough room for the type and also requested that I depict the author as the main character in the artwork. I understood that the editor at FSG really had an affection for this book and as a result the cover art was not rushed, which afforded me the time to labor over the art which took about 3 weeks to do once they settled on one of my sketches. I sent them about 6 ideas before finalizing the concept, which revealed the author’s personal story of attachment to the land. I wanted to create a montage of animals and landscape as well as portray her as an activist; armed in a pose of a fighter, showing her disbanned and unattached relationship from the Mormon Church. Thus the church trails behind her, she is armed with the nature that she loves dearly surrounded by and covered in the animals of the land as well as dwelling beneath the historic cave paintings. Overall, the feeling I was trying to convey was Amy’s life so far as a tapestry, rich in history and social context and some sense of empowerment in taking a stand for what is right.

I really enjoyed the first part of the book, especially the way she described her husband as an animal (as I recall). Her creative writing kept me curious and moving through the first part of the book, though my attention did wane a bit throughout, but in all fairness: I had to get to doing the work of creating the art and prefer to spend less time on reading and more time on the actual art. I can usually get a sense of what an author has to say by reading the first 60 pages of a book and then skimming the middle and then reading the conclusions at the end.

Having not spent much time in Utah, I found Trespass to be enlightening and valued learning more about the abuses of the land, and developed an admiration for Amy and her husband in the quest to bring change in what seemed to be an impossibly small town in a big countryside, surrounded by people addicted and bound by their religious backgrounds which interfered with their ability to actually see what was happening in their own present day life in regards to the land they lived on … as if they had a right to do whatever they wanted as long as they were a religious participant.  I found a lot of texture in this personal story and I think you can see that in the art as well.

Richard Thompson has some recommendations for you on Free Comic Book Day.

Mangaloid Wars X: Giant Spazzoid Zombie Robots Invade!
This one is really the sensitive coming-of-age story of a withdrawn girl & her fragile, alcoholic mother in Louisiana in the 1950s, and their battle against the Giant Spazzoid Zombie Robot Invasion. (All ages)

The National Magazine Awards were handed out, and Caitlin Flanagan and Atlantic Monthly won for criticism. I'm processing.

May 01, 2008

Now that National Poetry Month is over, a less controversial celebration is upon us (I *won't* say "at hand").

The Virginia Quarterly Review's blog indulges in a little schadenfreude after reading slush-pile rejections in the "bad" and "terrible" categories: Why does the speaker's wife only want babies from Chinese shacks? This is the craziest poem. And the scariest. I feel like we should the call the cops on this guy. (There should be a category called "Inappropriate to Humanity.")

At This Recording, Will Hubbard takes on Ashbery: Ashbery wishes his reader to be aware of (and at the foot of) a new way of understanding the world, though he does not want to identify that way for his reader. Instead, . . . his method is to ‘call attention’ to things that have no 'intrinsic importance' so that his reader may move beyond them at his own discretion to whatever revelation awaits, to the great 'something else'. It's a follow-up of sorts to last week's look at Ashbery's interview style.

Gary Snyder has won the Lilly Prize.

Charles Simic's year is up.

Elizabeth Bishop in the Library of America: With the Library of America's "Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters," editors Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz have managed to combine the canonization and demystification of Elizabeth Bishop between two covers. The book simultaneously enshrines the poet in our national library and makes readily available pages of material, especially failed journalistic efforts, that are middling and mundane.

Trevor Matthews on hands. | Kathryn Simmons on "The Woman Who Worried Herself to Death."

McGonagall, "the world's worst poet," will go on auction. The late-Victorian poet's works are expected to fetch about the same as a brace of Harry Potter first editions: Women’s Suffrage adds McGonagall’s tuppence to the debate about extending the vote to women: "Fellow men! why should the lords try to despise/And prohibit women from having the benefit of the parliamentary Franchise?/When they pay the same taxes as you and me/I consider they ought to have the same liberty."

A video close reading of Tupac, one which locates him simultaneously in Romantic and medieval (!) traditions. (And here's part 2.)

Slate on the unexpected poetry of perfume reviews:

"I liked it very much in Macy's when I went there drunk one day, and told everyone afterward I found the perfect bourbon vanilla with orange blossom, as if it'd been a life quest. Sadly the bourbon was all me."

For scientists trying to parse the mystery of brain and mind, she is one more case of the possible link between mental illness and artistic creativity. With all our scans and neurotransmitters, we are not much closer to figuring out that relationship than was Lord Byron, who announced that poets are “all crazy” and left it at that.

Buzz Bissinger wrote Friday Night Lights, which was turned into a TV show that I spent a week trying really hard not to watch on Netflix. I failed. I got zero work done that week. I would tell him that, but it looks like from his appearance on Costas Now that he would throw something at my head in response. Blogs are dedicated to cruelty and journalistic dishonesty, he says. He would not be invited over for dinner.

This year, a more cryptic stencil has appeared on the Humber Bay Arch Bridge, boldly proclaiming "ISBN 486-28495-6" for all to see and ponder. This International Standard Book Number turns out to be a paperback edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. (Thanks to Joanne for the link.)

I was a couple chapters into Shmuley Boteach's The Broken American Male when I called my friend and announced, "I'm pretty sure I'm a broken American male." Workaholism? Check. Sex addict? By his definition, check. Ignore the kids? If I had some, I'm sure I'd be the type to hand them off to others. Turns out all I need is a wife! Then everything would be better. From my column at Smart Set:

He does not blame feminism for the state of masculinity, or so he says. But having read his thoughts on femininity before, I read The Broken American Male wondering how long it would take before women became the problem. That would be 47 pages. “[M]en are with women who have in turn been with so many other men that the modern American male feels that his very anatomy is being measured against some standard that he cannot attain.” Sluts! I noticed that in his book about femininity he did not have a corresponding chapter about women’s bodies being compared to men’s former sexual partners, not to mention every woman on television, in movies, on billboards, in pornography; or that chick he saw on the elevator and used as a masturbatory fantasy earlier that day.

April 29, 2008

William Trevor Wins Irish Book Award Shock!

Established in 1919, the James Tait Black is the UK's oldest literary award. Booker? Costa? Whippersnappers. It's also distinguished by a judging panel of scholars and graduate students of literature, because in 1919 breakfast TV presenters and marketing department interns hadn't been invented yet.

James Tait Black Novel shortlist
Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben
The Devil's Footprints by John Burnside
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
A Far Country by Daniel Mason
Salvage by Gee Williams

The James Tait Black Biography shortlist
Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray
God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand by Richard Reeve

Larry McMurtry, author, bookseller, ""bibliophile par excellence," has been awarded the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award.

What does the LAPL Literary Award mean to you? 

It means $10,000 is going to the little library in Archer City that myself and some others founded 25 years ago.

Sticky Pages

I grew up in the era of just say no to drugs. And while I don’t count Nancy Reagan as a childhood hero like I do Wonder Woman, Elizabeth Wakefield and Kelly Taylor, I do blame, or credit, Ms. Reagan with the fact that I used very few drugs in high school and college. I didn’t say no necessarily, I said, rather, will this make me seem tough and urban? And will you call my parents if it seems I’m having a heart attack?

Because Nancy was working her just say no magic in the form of Public Service Announcements, I’m pretty sure most any world ill can be solved with a PSA.

I thought I’d do a PSA for Bookslut’s readers today. It’s always my aim to get every one of you more play. And for you to look smart while you’re getting your play. Today’s Sticky Pages is a PSA for the guys. Believe me, if a woman sees you reading this book, you’re golden. Except you really should read it because you don’t want to get to the moment of truth without reading it because she’ll know if you have or haven’t prepared. Oh boy, will she know. And then you’ll know. And her best friend will know. And the Internet will know.

Today’s PSA is from Dr. Ian Kerner’s seminal work on having sex with a woman, She Comes First. The book is about using oral sex to get a woman off before the intercourse happens. Let me be clearer. Before you insert your penis into a woman’s vagina, you pay attention to her, with your mouth. For a while. Longer than three minutes.

I promise you, if you do this, you will have more sex. Because your woman will want you to do it again. And again.

But you must get started. Here are Kerner’s suggestions for “The Approach.”

Page 112 from She Comes First by Ian Kerner, Phd.

• Run your fingers gently through her pubic hair
• Be sure to tease her amply. Kiss her softly on the inner thigh, as well as the smooth skin adjoining her vulva. Kiss her with little succulent smacks (lips pursed, no tongue) on her inner and outer lips, or even on the top of the head.  Make sure that your first kiss is less about direct contact with the clitoris and more about appreciating the entire genital area.
• Breathe hotly on her vulva
• Blow, ever so gently, on her clitoral head
• If she’s still wearing her panties, kiss her through them. Then delicately peel them to the side to reveal a glistening wet vulva.

Wow. Was that as good for you as it was for me? I think my keyboard is feeling a little violated right now.

So please guys, run out and buy this book. And just say no to drugs. But yes to oral sex.