January 31, 2005
Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.
Well, it's been fun. See you in Canada.
I was flattered when my book I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles: A Biography of The Proclaimers became a Number One bestseller in Scotland. And now I find out it meant nothing. I feel so betrayed. (Via Confessions.)
The Guardian presents a digested read of Ian McEwan's Saturday — plus an excerpt, plus a review.
Plato wanted to banish all poets from his ideal Republic, and having just watched an advance copy of a new documentary film, "Voices in Wartime," I suspect that President Bush would also like to ban poets from his less-than-ideal republic.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator." — George W. Bush, Dec. 18, 2000
The Lambda Literary Award nominations are up, and hooray for one of my favorite books of last year, Rent Girl by Michelle Tea and Lauren McCubbin. It received two nominations.
Jesus Christ, would somebody please get Scott Thill some good books? His woefully inept column about small press books for Salon.com needs a major reworking. "I consider myself a serious journalist," he confesses, while misstating that Will Eisner's death has been largely ignored. Oh really? And I'm not entirely sure he's even reading the books he's writing about. He manages to talk more about the air around the books than the writing, usually padding with a few paragraphs from interviews with the author and letting them explain the book. At least this column isn't as bad as previous months when he made ridiculous statements about Austin's Ransom Center, a place he's never even visited. I can't believe I just resubscribed to Salon. (It was mostly for the free New Yorker subscription, just so you know.)
Was Pushkin a pornographer?
But now Alexander Pushkin’s legacy is in danger of being tainted by an argument over whether some of his early work is pornographic, and whether his ‘adult verses’ even came from the pen of the ‘National Poet’.
A collection of his poems has been seized by Russian police as part of a crack-down on "obscene" literature. The move has horrified the nation’s literati in a country where serious literature is a serious business and popular with the masses. Only last week, Moscow’s foreign ministry published a book of poems by the nation’s diplomats.
Terry Jones of Monty Python got slammed by English critics for his mystery novel Who Murdered Chaucer? (Well, "his" in the sense that he coauthored it with three other people. But none of them are ever quoted ad nauseam by a fleet of nerds, so: "his.") The book was just released in the States, where he's hoping for a better reaction.
Ian McEwan is interviewed at the Scotsman.
"My own wariness of language was very much drawn from my mother. She always had a weird, problematic relationship with language. She mispronounced things, she got the wrong end of the stick, hilariously, and although I shook it all off in a way, or thought I did, something remained. A wariness. I could never quite trust language, because I thought it might not do what I wanted it to do."
At the Boston Globe, James Sallis looks at "the Copernicus of the horror story," H. P. Lovecraft, in preparation for the new Library of America Lovecraft collection. (I'd love to get my brother's take on this article; he's a Lovecraft aficionado.) If you can't afford the Library of America collection, though, don't despair — you can always read Hello Cthulhu for free.
Back when I was in high school, Details was an excellent magazine. They were basically what Esquire is now (most of the time). They had good articles, their taste in books, music, and movies tended to match mine, and they once published an article about a sniper in Sarajevo. I think I read that article half a dozen times I loved it so much. They even turned it into a (mediocre) movie with an unfortunate Bon Jovi title.
So imagine my surprise when I'm about halfway through Hello to All That by John Falk and I happen to read the About the Author. I was already enjoying the book, but learning he was the author of that piece made me excited. This was, after all, his memoirs about that time he spent in Sarajevo, but with alternating chapters about living through depression. It might seem like a weird gimmick, but it works if only because when you're reading about how he can't get out of bed, you're wondering how the fuck he managed to get out of bed and onto a plane to Sarajevo. He does get around to telling the story of how he met the sniper from the Details story, but the best stuff is what leads up to that: a war correspondent who has no idea how to find the war.
The depression parts are equally good and manage to not make "stayed in bed again today" sound repetitive or boring. He was obviously blessed with a remarkably supportive family, and I kept wishing his parents would adopt me. The ending is a little sappy, but it's forgivable. At least it answered my question about what the hell the author of that piece had been doing all these years.
I also read Ex Machina this weekend. It was pretty good. Comic book geeks everywhere have been raving about it, but I like Vaughan's other series Y a whole lot more. I thought it was a clunky start, but I'll probably keep picking it up. I think that brings me up to ten books for January. Not bad.
Few activities are as likely to bring on a fit of depressive jealousy as leafing through the back pages of one's alumni magazine. While you molder in a studio apartment, stuck in a dead-end job, your former classmates are founding clinics in Thailand, cranking out best sellers and unveiling major new paintings -- as well as bearing exceptional children. You thought you'd be a success, or at least have a chance to make a decent stab at it while you were still young. Sorry.
Goddammit. How did she know that?
Lizzie Skurnick of The Old Hag (who will soon collaborate with us on a website to be called The Old Slut's All-Natural Good-Time Book Revue) reviews Sam Lipsyte's Home Land for the New York Times. Her advice, which I am planning to heed: Buy it.
"Moshe," I said, "I know what to do if attacked by a bear, but not a wild pig. Have you ever seen a wild pig before? What should we do?"
To which Moshe replied, "Oh, I've come across wild pigs several times."
Which temporarily made me feel a little better about the situation, until he followed up with: "I was in the Golan Heights in a tank, though, so I never had to figure out how to defend myself against one..."
Author Jeff VanderMeer was (nearly) attacked by a wild pig.
LA Weekly has an interview with Marilynne Robinson about (of course) the 25-year gap between her novels Housekeeping and Gilead, why goodness does not have to equal "boring," and her interest in theology.
January 28, 2005
You’ve probably heard the sound yourself at a reading—an "mmmmm" emanating from somewhere in the crowd, usually at the conclusion of poem with a linguistic or emotional zinger. Does that "mmmmm" mean that listeners have been transported into the sublime? Or is the poem just cheap, the mmmmm a smug "Amen!"?
(Via Choriamb.)
Even the Bible isn't Christian enough for Southern Baptists.
Rolling Stone Magazine reversed its decision not to air an advertisement for the Today’s New International Version (TNIV) of the Bible earlier this week, but the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated Lifeway Christian Resources has not yet changed its decision to keep the edition out of its 122 bookstores because of the version’s gender-neutral translations.
Ian McEwan talks to the Independent about his new novel, Saturday (the cover of which looks awfully familiar).
The Baltimore City Paper profiles the great young Southern author James Whorton, Jr., author of the new novel Frankland. Whorton discusses his experiences being taught by John Barth:
“The cool thing about Barth as a teacher is that he has a very systematic approach to analyzing stories. He talks about a story as if it were a machine,” Whorton says. “He will acknowledge that there is a mysterious aspect to a work of art, but he doesn’t try to talk about that in class. He will just talk about the machine.
“What we can’t talk about, we must pass over in silence,” he muses, summing up Barth’s teaching style.
I'm not sure "muses" was the right word to use here, since it's pretty clear that Whorton was directly quoting Wittgenstein. But whatever. It's an interesting profile.
I understand the way David L. Ulin thinks. I am also a completist in my collecting, or at least I was when I could afford to be. But when Ulin started his 30 year search for an elusive copy of Vonnegut's Canary in a Cathouse, it was only for one short story that had not been reprinted elsewhere. Personally, I would love to finish my collection of J G Farrell books, but not $486.02 love. Ulin got off easy with $75.
Robert Zemeckis is working on the film adaptation of The Corrections.
Comic Book Resources has the transcript of a fascinating interview between Alan Moore (genius) and Stewart Lee (creator of Jerry Springer: The Opera).
AM: I mean, like the super heroes, it only really works when you're a kid, to be honest. When I was I think seven, I decided what I wanted to do with my life which was to actually put on a costume and fight crime. (audience laughs) It's obvious, what else were you going to do? I got my mum to make me a costume, well it wasn't really a costume it was a kind of a vest and I wore Wellingtons because that was the nearest I could get to the sort of super hero boots and I've got a mask on. I remember hiding in a tree…
SL: Was that your special power? (audience laughs)
AM: Yeah, I could hide in trees at will!
Mice are sneaky. Disney has somehow obtained an advance copy of James B. Stewart's DisneyWar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom, thus pissing off publisher Simon & Schuster (which is pronounced "Viacom").
The Guardian has an extract from Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.
Bruce Wagner is profiled at LA Weekly. He has a new book, The Chrysanthemum Palace. He also, evidently, drives some feature writers mad.
Bruce Wagner nursed a large latte and studied The New York Times. As always, he was dressed in black, and two or three days’ dark stubble decorated his cheeks and prominent chin. His eyes, warm and brown like those of a highly intelligent dog, peered out of hefty black-framed glasses, and his partly bald, partly shaved head was the color of an old onion.
Wendy of Pound, subbing for Maud Newton, tells tales of the MacArthur Foundation.
"Hello, ________? This is the MacArthur Foundation. How are you today?* Great! Our records show that it's been ___ years since your last exceptional literary work, and we were just wondering when you were going to, you know, write something else really outstanding, because in light of that article in Crain's Chicago Business suggesting we make adjustments to increase our effectiveness by adopting a more disciplined, businesslike approach, we thought we'd just check in every other day or so to make sure you're busy, and that you're working on something good, and that it's not just about, say, cooking lobsters, though that whole business about 'turning up the heat under you' sure is vivid, ha ha, isn't it, Genius, ha ha!"
*Norman Manea always just hangs up at this point.
January 27, 2005
The county election supervisor who devised the infamous "butterfly ballot" that helped spur the 2000 presidential election meltdown is writing a book about her experiences.
The weird thing is, people trying to buy former Palm Beach County (Florida) Election Supervisor Theresa LePore's book will actually end up voting for Pat Buchanan.
The Comics Reporter links to this press release (pdf) about Roaring Books's graphic novel imprint First Second. The artists attached include Jessica Abel, Eddie Campbell, Sara Varon, and Grady Klein. Their website, so far, doesn't do much.
John Eldredge wants Christian men to start kicking ass.
Citing a quotation attributed to Jesus in the Bible, that “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and violent men take it by force”, (the book) advocates the “deep and holy goodness of masculine aggression” and contrasts this with the idea that “the kingdom of heaven is open to passive, wimpy men who enter it by lying on the couch and watching TV”.
Because fundamentalist Christians aren't violent enough already, I guess.
Houston has finally solved the biggest problem to ever face their city: the presence of Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale in the city's public libraries.
(Houston Mayor Bill) White recently ordered that the library's dozen copies of Jameson's best-selling How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale be removed from open shelves.
In making his decision, White sidestepped the committee process that Houston's libraries typically use to evaluate complaints about items in their collections.
It's really hard to be Nick Laird. I mean, being married to Zadie Smith has to really hurt your literary career. Can you imagine how much press he gets just because of his famous wife? And he has to wonder if his six-figure book deal was the primarily the result of the marriage. Sigh. So hard to be an over-paid writer.
As a couple they are, he says, "very involved with each other's work"; but her fame is something that can't but make life tricky for him. At parties he has found himself "feeling two feet high a lot of the time" as his wife is mobbed; at a big literary dinner in Italy Zadie was at the top table beside Bernardo Bertolucci while "I was between the gardener's daughter and some woman who was Italian and didn't speak any English. It was a really long three hours."
A 12-year-old Londoner found several mistakes in the newest Encyclopaedia Britannica. Nerrrrrrrrrrrd! (Oh, wait. Sorry.)
Remember those rumors that the New York Times would start charging for access to its website? A recent survey makes it look like subscription costs could be around $13.49 to $15.99 a month, or $1 for daily access. There goes all Bookslut links to The New York Times. We're broke.
The BBC has a short profile of Whitbread-winning Andrea Levy.
Elvis Costello, poet laureate of the recently dumped, is writing an opera based on the life of Hans Christian Andersen. This news is as good an excuse as any to go buy whatever's missing from your Elvis collection, though might I suggest the tribute album Almost You: The Songs of Elvis Costello from Austin's Glurp Records? It might well be the best tribute album ever.
Roll out the red carpet: the publishing industry is trying to apply some glitter to its image with a new book awards program that is a cross between the Oscars and the People's Choice Awards.
Oh...no.
Oh man. Anybody speak Hungarian?
January 26, 2005
Tonight at the Hideout is Funny Ha-Ha II, with Claire Zulkey, Wendy McClure, Nathan Rabin, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and many others reading. You should come and say hi. 1354 W Wabansia, 8-10 pm.
Someday, I will copyedit the Great American Novel.
A grandmother on a drugs charge who cooks treats using cannabis has written a book about her activities which she aims to get published.
Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
New City briefly profiles folk singer John Wesley Harding, whose novel Misfortune will be published in April (under his real name, Wesley Stace).
Nerve has an interview with Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink.
The Independent has a duel between two booksellers: one who works for a small shop and one who works for a superstore. Their arguments are nothing new. Service vs. Selection. Personal touch vs. Pricing. Just because you're supposed to support independent anything if you're a good human being vs. Convenience. What they don't answer is "Which is the best shop?" When I lived in Austin, Borders Bookstore really was the best bookstore. Better service, better selection, fewer facial piercings and attitude problems. In Chicago, I have to take the bus and transfer to the el to get to Unabridged, even when there are two or three chain stores more conveniently located, because I love it so. So argue all you like in hypotheticals, it never gets to the real question.
The Gothamist interviews Genevieve Field, editor of Sex and Sensibility, a collection of stories by women authors like Amy Sohn, Jennifer Weiner, and Lisa Carver.
Thanks to everyone who sent me get-well emails over the past few days. (And to those who didn't, fuck you. Fuck you so much.) I am still in a virus-induced haze, so I apologize in advance if my posts over the next few days don't make much pancakes.
Hugh Grant helped pick Andrea Levy's book Small Island as the Whitbread winner, you know. Maybe you heard. He did it, by the way, to force himself to catch up on contemporary literature.
Amblongus comments on a CNN interview with Hugh Hewitt about his book Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World.
"When you come to hughhewitt.com or Powerline, we'll line things up."
Line things up? I just don't understand the way the hip kids talk. Is it a coke reference?
"If you want to know what's going on in Baghdad today, Mabil Gazette is there. He's a soldier blogging from Baghdad."
That's the Mudville Gazette, a chickenblogger favorite, as it lets them feel they're a mouse-click away from the blood, noise and glory without having to put their pants on and leave mom's basement.
Nextbook interviews Jennifer Traig about her new book Devil in the Details.
Just a quick 50 Books update:
#7: Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film by Peter Biskind. A good trashy, catty read.
#8: A book that I didn't like for so many reasons that I'm not even going to post the title or author here. I know, completely unlike me, but there you go. I had wanted something light for the cold winter day, but instead I ended up questioning the future of literature from my generation. Maybe if you get me drunk I'll go into the whole thing.
So now I'm working on John Falk's Hello to All That. Terrible cover art (The Boy turns it over whenever he finds it so he doesn't have to look at it), great book. I had to give up on Brothers Karamazov as I lost my copy. For some reason I just wasn't that into it anyway. I enjoyed reading it while I was doing so, but I just didn't want to pick it up again to keep reading. Just the wrong time for me to try to read it. I might try The Devils instead for the next book.
Or maybe I'll go with one of the ten hardbacks I bought yesterday. I've probably mentioned it before, but my favorite bookstore in Chicago is Unabridged Books. They have an excellent selection, and the best remaindered selection I have ever seen. It's not just the usual Bill O'Reilly bookfest, they have books you actually want to read for seven bucks. I got out of there with ten hardbacks (Feeding a Yen, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, This is Not Civilization, Metro Stop Dostoevsky, Getting Mother's Body, The Solace of Leaving Early, Desert Memories, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, Pattern Recognition, and Borrowed Finery) for under $70. God bless those guys. If you want to pay full price for some books, their selection is one of the best in the city, at least as far as it corresponds with my taste. Everyone in Chicago: go shop there.
Thanks to the wonderful Leela Corman, Robyn Chapman, and Ellen Linder, our new Cafepress store is open.
January 25, 2005
John Eklund does not like the world of book marketing. Nor the Amazon.com recommendation features. He gets into the topic of how bad publishers are at predicting the reception for any given book and how readers find the next great book to read. He doesn't really offer any suggestions, and he admits, "I’m not moved by advertising, though I’m obsessive about reading reviews." But when the industry is met with the Incredible Shrinking Book Review Section, what's a reader to do?
Pitchaya Sudbanthad profiles a Brooklyn used bookstore for the Morning News.
The arrival of the internet brought sweeping changes to the used-books trade. Bookstores can now list their inventories online. A used bookstore in Arkansas might be able to sell a volume on the mating habits of hairy-nosed wombats to a gentleman in Brazil looking to fill a void in his library. As a result, used books are making a comeback. According to Ipsos Book Trends, used books accounted for an estimated 14 percent of trade book purchases made by adults in 2003, up one percentage point from 2002. Using an online survey of booksellers, Book Hunter Press estimated that sales of used books amounted to $614 million in 2003, with online sales accounting for over 53 percent of all used book sales in 2003, up from 49 percent in 2001. Used bookstores now have to compete with stay-at-home sellers who keep their inventories in a spare closet. Why then even bother to open a store at all?
“Winter has been very slow. There are days we panic,” says Rachel. “We worry about which bills to pay first.”
Knopf has really outdone itself with the Haruki Murakami website. There's commentary by Chip Kidd on Murakami's cover art, excerpts from his books, an interview with Philip Gabriel about his work translating the newest book Kafka on the Shore, and a hell of a lot more. You can spend the rest of the day there.
Yesterday might have been the most depressing day of the year, but tonight is Burns Night! Get out your poetry, haggis, and whiskey.
A rare book of German drawings valued at $600,000 has brought its owner under fire. The state-owned Staatsgalerie claims the book was stolen from the German government by a Nazi general in World War II. St. Louis Today has more on Germany's attempts to retrieve the book.
Chris Zammareli, author of Bookslut's Banned Bookslut column, was asked to comment for a Washington Post story on recent book bannings.
Alternet has created a separate website called "Books We Like: The People's Republic of Books."
Books We Like is "activist e-commerce", a way for progressives to use their online shopping to effect change. BWL collectivizes online book (actually any product at Amazon, Powells, etc.) purchases, maximizes the resulting sales commissions, and pools them to fertilize progressive independent media.
The bible of rock 'n' roll, Rolling Stone magazine, will run an ad for the Holy Bible next month — the same ad it rejected two weeks ago for its "spiritual message."
The Rocky Mountain News profiles Dale Salwak's new collection Living with a Writer.
"In my view, my job was to be his secretarial assistant as needed, as well as his social secretary, his nourisher, his bed mate, and eventually his breeder. My job was not to be anything not related to him."
Then [Betty Fussell] decided to write her own books. Oh sorry day. "The fierceness of my needs conflicted almost totally with the fierceness of his. The betrayal was that I now put mine first."
Michael Schaub is not dead! Nor did we get into a feud over which John Banville book we had the most sentimental attachment to, leading him to leave Bookslut forever. He's just sick. You know smokers. They have the immune systems of kidney transplant patients. But with every vote for Bookslut for Best Topical Weblog in the 2005 Bloggies, he will regain just a little bit of strength. Oh shit, that's Tinkerbell and clapping, isn't it? Nevertheless, I'm sure he'd be thrilled.
January 24, 2005
National Book Critics Circle nominees:
Fiction
Edwidge Danticat, "The Dew Breaker"
Alan Hollinghurst, "The Line of Beauty"
David Mitchell, "Cloud Atlas"
Marilynne Robinson, "Gilead"
Philip Roth, "The Plot Against America"
General Non-fiction
Kevin Boyle, "Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age"
Edward Conlon, "Blue Blood"
Diarmaid MacCulloch, "The Reformation: A History"
David Shipler, "The Working Poor: Invisible in America"
Timothy B. Tyson, "Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story"
Biography/Autobiography
Ron Chernow, "Alexander Hamilton"
Bob Dylan, "Chronicles Vol. 1"
Stephen Greenblatt, "Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare"
John Guy, "Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart"
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, "De Kooning: An American Master"
Poetry
Brigit Pegreen Kelly, "The Orchard"
D.A. Powell, "Cocktails"
Adrienne Rich, "The School Among the Ruins"
James Richardson, "Interglacial"
Gary Snyder, "Danger on Peaks"
Criticism
Richard Howard, "Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003"
Patrick Neate, "Where You're At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet"
Graham Robb, "Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century"
Craig Seligman, "Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me"
James Wood, "The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel"
Rick Moody seems like a smart guy. So why he has to preface his review of Epileptic with the standard "Maus and a couple other comics are real literature!" line is beyond me.
Penguin has been having some problems in the UK.
After two head injuries, Bella Bathurst (author of Special and The Lighthouse Stevensons) started to go deaf. She writes in the Observer about her experience.
If you're born with all your immaculate senses present and correct, and if one of those senses dwindles away to a whisper, you do tend to mind. Initially I minded because of the connotations of hearing loss. If you are short-sighted and wear glasses, you are traditionally perceived as either very stupid or very clever. If you go deaf, you are traditionally seen as thick, or old, or both. You're dumb, you're slow on the uptake, you're a few crucial beats behind the rest of the world. I spent most of my childhood being mistakenly seen as stupid, and I didn't like the reminders.
Cathleen Falsani is offended that Rolling Stone refused to accept an ad for the Bible, saying, "Perhaps Rolling Stone honchos were worried that an ad for a Bible would somehow blow the cool." Or, just maybe, Rolling Stone was worried that the godless heathens that subscribe to their magazine would like one thing to remain God-free. Good for Rolling Stone.
Newspapers, craving readers, decide to get shitty to attract youngsters. (Go to bugmenot.com for a login.)
Professor Gronas, who teaches Russian literature, used customer reviews on Amazon in order to study how tastes inform what people read. "Most studies of taste are based on surveys," Professor Gronas said. "With the Amazon.com reviews, you have a huge bank of material that is voluntary."
In his study, he examined the star ratings given by readers to determine what patterns, if any, correspond to different types of books. He also analyzed the content of the reviews to see what criteria people used in making judgments and by what processes they came to those conclusions.
Christopher Hitchens is interviewed at The Atlantic Online about his new book Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, why the smoking ban in New York shows off Mayor Bloomberg's "penis envy," and why everyone thinks he's a loon now.
I guess I shouldn't really complain, because at least it means I have a reputation for something. It must be the same if you're a politician—you make one remark and it ends up being the thing that people remember about you. I suppose Dan Quayle must have to force himself to laugh along with all those people who make potato jokes. When people introduce me by saying something like, "This is the guy who said Mother Teresa is no good," I just have to suppress a sigh.
(Also, you can watch Hitchens on the Daily Show in their archives.)
January 21, 2005
It turns out that the "Books for Babies" program is not structured like the "Toys for Guns" programs, so if you show up with babies, you can not exchange them for books. Completely blows my weekend plans.
One of the models of American leadership is that of Moses, leading God's chosen people - then the Jews, now the Americans - towards a promised land, following a pillar of fire. At one point, according to the Bible, Moses was shown a sign: "Behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed."
But the key fire passage in the Burning Bush speech - "We have lit a fire as well; a fire in the minds of men" - actually has its origins in a novel by the 19th century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils, about a group of terrorists' ineffectual struggle to bring down the tyrannical Tsarist regime.
Sometimes it pays to be subscribed to Esquire. One of the best stories in Esquire in a long time was January's "The American Dream" by Sara Solovich. The article debunked the claims of Jumana Hanna, an Iraqi woman who claims she was tortured and raped and that her husband was murdered by Saddam's guards. Hanna was the subject of an extensive Washington Post profile and her story was referenced many times by the Bush administration. Well, the Washington Post has now printed a retraction.
Jerry Weinstein is upset about the popularity of Thomas E. Woods, Jr's The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. (Read Michael Schaub's commentary about the book here.)
In mapping the Colonial through Clinton eras, Professor Woods' overall strategy is to take on the Liberal Gods, rehabilitate the fallen, and smear, smear, smear along the way. Among his "revelations" from the last three-hundred-and-fifty years of American history: there was no genocide of Native Americans, the Federal government was meant to be subordinate to the will of the states, and the civil-rights movement — starting with Brown vs. Board of Education — was a bust.
I Love Books dishes about The Morning News's Tournament of Books.
In this world there are the Golden Globes, presented by the foreign "press," and the Academy Awards and it's true that on awards night you can't find a waiter anywhere in town. Several steps below that is the Nobel Prize followed by journalism's highest honor, the Pulitzer.
Only the Nobel brings a huge cash prize and -- if you happen to teach at UC Berkeley -- a parking space marked NL for Nobel Laureate.
Looking for a 300 volume collection of books about golf? Alan Parker's library is going to auction and included is a first edition of the Scottish SF book Golf in the Year 2000.
[I]t follows the tale of avid 19th-century golfer Alexander J Gibson, who falls into a deep sleep on 24 March 1892 and wakes up Rip Van Winkle-style on 25 March 2000 to find a world transformed.
Television, superfast trains, digital watches and female emancipation are all predicted in the tale, which envisages a world of leisure where golf is paramount.
NPR has a nice ten minute segment on the Marvel comic series Arana: Heart of the Spider. They talk to the editor, Jennifer Lee, and Joe Quesada about Marvel's first Latina comic book series.
Contra Costa Times profiles Thai Jones's new book A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience. Turns out writing about your lawless parents in the 60's can be a little awkward at times.
"My goal with the book is not to get my parents put in jail," Thai Jones says. "I said, 'There's not going to be any sex in this book about the '60s. I'm going to put in as much rock 'n' roll, drugs and car chases as I can,'" he recalls.
January 20, 2005
The Paris Review is searching again for a new editor, barely a year after appointing a replacement for George Plimpton, the only other person to fill the post in its five decades as one the nation's premier literary magazines.
If you look to your right you'll notice a link to The Morning News's Tournament of Books. (That image, by the way, is evidently a rooster. You have no idea how long I looked at that going "What the fuck? Is that a pointy beard?") The first results won't be coming in until the beginning of February, but today they explain the ground rules and you can see the books that were included. (Not the list I would have come up with, but what are you gonna do?) I've read my super secret books and have made my decision, but they're not letting me in on what the other choices have been either. I'll put up another notice when the results start to be released.
The newly announced chairman of the 2005 Man Booker prize has admitted that the judges are unlikely to read all 130 books in contention, while describing his fellow judges as "light on the minorities" and the process as like a "world federation wrestling match".
Metacritic.com is now also compiling book reviews.
Daniel Asa Rose spent some time copy editing at a porn magazine.
Tackling a new letter, I'd first hit the find and replace key and change every "cum" to "come" (an average of 19 changes per letter). As per my style sheet, I'd make sure every "doggie-style" was hyphenated, every "bunghole" was not, every "blowjob" was one word, every "daisy chain" was two. Picture, if you will, all of this being dispatched with a 10-month-old baby draped over my lap. In our cozy, kinky domesticity I enlisted my wife to proofread, which she'd do during commercials of "20/20." "Honey," I'd call out from my study, "is 'dream cock' hyphenated?"
Los Bros Hernandez are interviewed at The Onion AV Club.
Director Francis Lawrence seems to think that what fans are most upset about with his movie Constantine is the change of location from London to Los Angeles. Oh yeah. That's exactly it.
Galleycat has more information on King Wenclas's accusations of plagiarism.
January 19, 2005
The greatest essay on Oedipus ever written. (Link from The Morning News.)
Steve Wasserman (LA Times): One of the great scandals of American journalism is the sad fact that too few newspapers regard the publication of book reviews as news that they should feel obligated to bring before readers, and instead consign such reviews --- where they publish them at all --- to virtual ghettos. In most newspapers, readers are lucky to get a column or halfpage, much less an entire separate Sunday section devoted to the coverage of books. And then, adding insult to injury, such reviews are too often written in baby talk. And yet it is doubtless the case that, despite all predictions of the triumph of the world wide web, books remain the single most important instrument for the conveyance of deep knowledge and lasting entertainment yet devised. Books still retain the patina of authority that only time can bestow. They have yet to be bested for ease of access and even for pure sensuality. They will not soon disappear so long as the human species is defined by its opposable thumb and its obsessive need to tell each other stories --- sometimes the same stories, over and over, albeit in new guise.
From Bookreporter's Round Table Discussion (that I seem to have overlooked for a month or so) with editors Wasserman, Sam Tanenhaus, Charlotte Abbott (Publishers Weekly), and Bob Minzesheimer (USA Today).
Nerve.com interviews Douglas Coupland about his new book Eleanor Rigby and his next book, a sequel to Microserfs.
Andrew Stilwell explains how Waterstone's (a large chain bookstore in the UK) has fallen in the last ten years and why independent bookstores are still important.
Even when the business underwent rapid expansion in the mid to late 1980s, each branch retained its local individuality, the manager was given his/her head and booksellers were valued for their knowledge: centrality was a very dirty word indeed. As part of our recent bid to run the bookselling concession at the Royal Festival Hall, we sought some testimonials from authors who had some first-hand knowledge of (and liked) our shop. In his piece, Colm Tóibín summed up the difference between Waterstone's then and now: "Up to 10 years ago, each manager could order and select according to his or her taste and judgement. Since then everything is arranged from central office by people who are experts at everything except books."
Kids these days, they have no sense of history. Esquire was sued for libel in 1969 after they printed accusations by Gore Vidal that William F. Buckley, Jr. was, among other things, an anti-Semite. Thirty years later, with all parties still alive, that same piece is collected into the anthology Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing: More than 70 Years of Celebrated Journalism, their excuse being they didn't know the history of the lawsuit. What do you know. Buckley got upset again. (Scroll down.)
At Maisonneuve, Michel Basilières calls for a renewed appreciation of the work of Fritz Leiber. (Link from Bookninja.)
Leiber was a different kind of writer, and weird horror was only one of his strengths. Among my favourites of his books are the science fiction satires. A Spectre Is Haunting Texas might be worth another look right about now. It’s set in the not terribly distant future when Texas oilmen have taken over all of North America. What a frightening thought. How could that ever happen?
January 18, 2005
"Tell me I'm Edmund Wilson," I said as I mounted her.
"Yes!" she said. "You are Edmund Wilson! You are Edmund Wilson! You're, you're...better than Edmund Wilson!"
"Yes! Yes! Oh, my fucking god, yes!"
There is no such thing as bad sex with Neal Pollack.
I love exorcisms. I love it when the History Channel or TLC gets all trashy and shows terrible re-enactments of exorcisms, I love it when Spanish priests show up on these programs swearing exorcisms are real, and I love watching The Exorcist, even if I have to carry around a knife with me in the apartment when it's over. (Which caused my friend Ben to comment, "The Dark Prince probably won't be stopped by a knife, for what it's worth.") M. Scott Peck's Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption will definitely find its way onto my to be read list. Peck is interviewed at Salon, and he's actually quite charming. In fact, he one day hopes that exorcists will be an equal opportunity job.
The fourth is the exorcist himself -- or hopefully herself, one of these days -- who is crucial to success since it is he who makes the diagnosis and gathers the team together.
In the former Yugoslavia, people are snapping up books by murderers Milorad Ulemek (Legija), Biljana Plavsic, and Radovan Karadzic, the man who brought the world "ethnic cleansing."
The Boston Globe interviews Sam Lipsyte, author of the new book Home Land.
George Szirtes, a Hungarian-born poet, has won Britain's T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. In related news, Patrick Buchanan looks to be a finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Anti-Semitism. More on that as it develops.
Rolling Stone rejected an advertisement from Zondervan's Bibles citing concerns about any ads of a religious nature. The ad was for Today's New International Version, which they are marketing to 18 to 34 year-olds.
The rejected ad shows a serious young man, apparently pondering the problems of modern life. The text touts the TNIV as a source for "real truth" in a world of "endless media noise and political spin." A blue Bible peeks up from the corner of the ad.
While the ad won't be carried in Rolling Stone, it will appear on MTV, VH1, The Onion, and Modern Bride. This version of the Bible is controversial to some Christians, and USA Today also explains the changes made in language that have irked some.
Peter Jackson will direct the film adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.
Want to read comic books without the hassle of, um, reading comic books? Marvel has the plan for you!
James Bowman is calling for Kirkus and Publishers Weekly to stop publishing anonymous reviews.
This weekend at the newsstand I came across conceive magazine. (They prefer the small case, thank you very much.) I had heard about it and thought the idea ridiculous, and with it now before me I knew I had to read it. I considered shoplifting it as I felt quite embarrassed, but I hid it amongst respectable magazine purchases like a girl buying socks and a pregnancy test.
For some reason I began to get optimistic on the way home. I thought about all of the areas that could be covered that for some reason don't get much attention. They could do an article on the daughters of mothers who took DES and the continued problems they're having. Wow, they could even maybe interview Judith Helfand and find out how things have changed for her since her documentary "A Healthy Baby Girl." Or you know what would be really interesting, even if highly unlikely? If they really addressed some of the controversies involved in reproduction. Like the gap of access to fertility treatments, or some of the more unsavory things about international adoption from certain countries, or the possibility that current fertility drugs could end up being the new DES, causing future reproductive issues in the children the women are trying so hard to conceive. Yeah, unlikely, but wouldn't that be great?
When I got home, all I saw was a bunch of nonsense. "Did you know... that a woman's sense of smell becomes more sensitve right around ovulation? 'If you're hoping to conceive a child, it's something to keep in mind. If you notice that things seem to be smelling stronger to you, it may indicate a good time to try.'" There are tips on how to program your ovulation schedule into your PDA and reminders that waterbeds might be killing your man's fertility. Beyond the nonsense there's also a whole lotta guilt. Did you used to smoke? That might be why you're having problems. Carry a few extra pounds? Well, obviously you have to lose that ass before you can get pregnant. Work too hard at your job? You're going to have to quit and go on a month-long "fertility retreat" to even get ready to get pregnant. The magazine wants women trying to get pregnant to think of only their fertility. Even in the column from a man's perspective, the woman is portrayed as a combination of holy and nag. She knows what's best, even if she has to control her husband's every move, clothing choice, and exercise regimen for optimal sperm count.
I know I'm not the right audience for this, as I don't have a single maternal bone in my body. But in the news we have a 66-year-old woman who just gave birth to a live baby so there are obviously controversies that should be discussed. They should even be discussed in a venue for women trying to get pregnant because right now the system seems to be "anything you want as long as you can pay for it." conceive magazine only serves to continue to cut women off from the discussion. "Don't worry your pretty little head about the ethics, here just inject yourself in the ass with some drugs, and we're really going to have to talk about how your yoga/t-shirt/house location/past/bubble bath is getting in the way of your One True Purpose: Motherhood."
The American Library Association has announced the winners of their children's literature prizes.
Newbery Medal: Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
Caldecott Medal: Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
Coretta Scott King Award (Author): Remember: The Journey of School Integration by Toni Morrison
Coretta Scott King Award (Illustrator): Ellington Was Not a Street illustrated by Kadir Nelson
January 17, 2005
Some legislators want Arkansas' public school textbooks to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman -- just like the recently approved amendment to the state Constitution.
Why does it always have to be the South? Why, God, why?
Will peace and equality save a virtually deserted Sudanese bookstore? Owner Gabriel Dok hopes so:
"They're not accustomed to reading anymore because of the struggle," he said, gesturing at racks with only a few secondhand copies of English classics, virtually the only reading material available in the town.
Elizabeth Janeway, who began her career as a best-selling novelist in the 1940's and later distinguished herself as a critic, a lecturer and an early advocate of the women's movement, died yesterday at a retirement home in Rye, N.Y. She was 91.
The San Francisco Chronicle uses the release of the movie Elektra to explain why Frank Miller's not getting any money for the adaptation of his character.
Mr. Michael Schaub, also known as the "better half of Bookslut" to those in the know, has a review of Robert Anderson's Little Fugue in the Washington Post. Next thing you know, they'll be asking him to pose topless in the Austin Chronicle.
Clint Eastwood's boxing drama Million Dollar Baby won this year's University of Southern California Scripter Award, an honor bestowed by The Friends of the USC Libraries for the best adaptation of a book or short story to film.
The Hillary Swank-Morgan Freeman movie was based on F. X. Toole's Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner.
My bet for next year's Scripter Award is the beautiful Racing Stripes, based on this cornerstone of American literature.
The Village Voice reviews Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories.
Booker compiles a Jungian taxonomy of stories, distilling the entire history of the fictive arts into a handful of flexible but unbreakable archetypes—Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth—and then extracts from those seven imaginative drops a single battle royal between Dark and Light.
The Guardian's Digested Read this week: The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle de Jour.
Samedi, le 1 novembre. French is so sophisticated and sensual. It also reminds you that I'm middle-class and respectable, because no one's really interested in working-class or foreign prostitutes. Did I mention that I am actually rather clever? Oh, I did. Well, Martin Amis is cool.
Vendredi, le 12 décembre. My nipples are clamped and a bald-headed man is pissing on me in the bath. I knew that would get your attention.
So I cheated on Brothers Karamazov this weekend. It was just a little too cold and depressing to continue reading a cold and depressing book, so I put it on hold to read a few graphic novels. Book #5 became Jason's You Can't Get There From Here, a classic tale of boy creates monster, monster gets lonely, boy creates monster's girlfriend, boy gets hot for monster's girlfriend, boy rapes monster's girlfriend, etc. It's pretty typical of Jason's work, rabbits and dogs standing in for people, an almost complete absence of dialogue, and a very simple artwork style. But it says something of his talent that a dog with a slightly boxy face immediately brought to mind "monster." It's a pretty clever story.
Book #6 was David B's Epileptic. I read volume one last year, after the nice man at Comix Revolution told me I had to read it. I'm grateful to him for it, as I never would have picked it up and only because of the cover. The cover was a bright yellow with two black and white line drawings of two young boys. Nothing about it grabbed me, and I'm sure I passed it over many times over the years. But when it was recommended, I immediately fell in love with it, struggling to continue to read the book during the previews before Spider-Man 2.
Pantheon has combined the two volume work into one hardback, and it's a handsome book. My only complaint is that the Pantheon book is somewhat smaller than the first volume, making some of the detailed artwork smaller and harder to see. But I'm grateful that they released the book, because the second half is even better than the first. Epileptic is David B's memoirs of growing up with a brother with epilepsy. The family is thrown into chaos as they try anything -- including a whole lotta quack remedies -- to save their son. I stayed up late to finish the book, and now I'm forcing it on everyone who steps into my apartment.
Now, back to Dostoyevsky.
There appears to be a lot of money in self-help books. So much so that publishers are now targeting children, adolescents and teenagers with titles like The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens, Who Moved My Cheese? for Teens, and the unsettlingly titled My Daddy Is a Pretzel: Yoga for Parents and Kids.
Rachel Cooke explains how Suad Amiry's e-mails from Ramallah to her family and friends became a successful book. Attention publishers: Someone please hurry up and publish Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries in America so that I do not have to pay extreme shipping fees from Amazon.co.uk. Thanks.
Janet Maslin is fascinated by Dear Senator, the memoir by Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the African-American daughter of late segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond.
..."Dear Senator" is not an angry book. (Essie Mae's closest approximation of rebellion: "I hate to say this, sir, but do you realize how black people feel about you?") But it manages to be an oddly candid one, less about Mr. Thurmond than about Essie Mae's lifelong sense of dislocation.
January 14, 2005
According to the Harris Poll, reading is still America's favorite pastime, with horseback riding, tennis and theater coming in last. I guess this explains the sudden, unexpected failure of Tennisslut.com. (Thanks and meow to GalleyCat for the link.)
Foster's (Australian for "small New England newspaper") commends a Maine school district for refusing to censor The Catcher in the Rye.
Were there teenagers in the late 1940s and ’50s who were as messed up as Salinger’s Holden Caulfield? Of course there were and anyone who began to mature in that era knows it. Are there similar young people today? You know there are.
Sean Connery is writing an autobiography. I wonder how he's going to explain Zardoz.
The Bozeman, Montana, parent who challenged the book On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God (see yesterday's post on the subject) has decided not to appeal the school district's decision to keep the book on the shelves. It's easy to be graceful in defeat when you lose the vote 9-0.
Want to make a lot of money by writing a self-serving memoir? Just hire an undocumented immigrant as a nanny! Not only will you avoid paying taxes, and screwing your employee out of Social Security, but you're guaranteed a lucrative book deal. Everybody wins! (Except, of course, the nanny, but we can't concern ourselves with the lower classes, can we?)
The Washington Times tells how girls were abandoned by the comics industry and what (financially struggling) publishers are now trying to do to lure them back. (Link from Thought Balloons.)
One of the worst parts about postmodern criticism — and that's a deep well, as far as bad parts go — was the condescension inherent in its belief that "classic" literature had nothing to offer those without a formal education. Jonathan Rose responds to these assumptions in the City Journal.
And yes, Plato is intensely relevant to former drug addicts. "Those of us in the grip of addiction use this process to rethink our lives," one student explains. "Socrates makes clear that you have to have the courage to examine yourself and to stand up for something. A lot of us have justified our weaknesses for too long a time."
Moscow's literary community is abuzz with reports that Novy Ochevidets, Russia's answer to The New Yorker, has been shut down after just five months in operation.
The kind of winter reading I aspire to.
The kind of winter reading I usually get done.
John Haskell (author of I am not Jackson Pollock and the new American Purgatorio) has a new short story at Nerve, "Lost."
When I became the librarian at the sexuality resource center, one of my first actions was to stock it with books by Ariel Gore. The Hip Mama Survival Guide was genius, I thought, giving on advice from the usual (you know, don't smoke when you're pregnant, it's bad) to the why-the-hell-isn't-this-in-every-pregnancy-manual like how to get the father to pay his child support and a step-by-step guide to applying for WIC programs.
Read her books, subscribe to her zine Hip Mama, and read this interview at Annabelle.
There are just so many lies surrounding motherhood. There are so many silences. Just telling the truth of our experience is still a revolutionary act. Sometimes I think, "Why should I publish this thing? It's just my freakin' DIARY." And a few reviews have agreed with that. But my actual readers, my mama-peers, we're all just so hungry for truth. Now, a lot of people ask me if I don't think my daughter has had to pay a price for all my righteous truth-telling, and I used to say "no," but now I see that she has. My family has paid a price because although I'm careful not to disclose anyone else's business, I do write and talk publicly about my business and there is a lot of overlap. It's not the easiest thing in the world to be my kid.
I'm curious about Sam Lipsyte. Several people have recommended The Subject Steve recommended to me, and it appears to have been slammed by a lot of Amazon.com reviewers, which is another good sign. Taylor Antrim's positive review of Lipsyte's latest, Home Land, makes me think I should just go out and buy his books already. Even if this sentence by Antrim hits way too close to home:
What to call male, unmarried life between the age of 27 and 40? Sunset youth? Still-coming-of-age? These are years of rejiggered aspiration, metabolic slowdown, waning cool.
Boo-hoo. It ain’t prostate cancer. It ain’t Falluja. Does anyone want to read fiction about not-quite-still-young men contemplating their place in the world?
I just turned 27. My back hurts. I call people under the age of 21 "kids." I'm one step away from referring to popular music as "just noise." Maybe I really do need this book.
Colin Meloy is one of my new favorite songwriters. The frontman for the Decemberists is hyper-literate and unbelievably original, so I'm looking forward to reading his contribution to the Thirty Three and a Third series, in which he considers the album Let It Be by the Replacements (another one of my favorite bands). The Village Voice reviews Meloy's book, though the first third of the review is spent subtly chiding Meloy for his grammar. The 'Mats deserve a book like this, especially after they had to endure the Crash Test Dummies' unspeakably terrible cover of "Androgynous," one of the standout tracks on Let It Be.
The Times profiles John Falk, who struggled with major depression, but found a sort of redemption in Sarajevo. He's written what looks to be a fascinating book about his experiences, Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace. Falk, evidently, has always depended on the kindness of strangers:
A kindly family, the Nonoviches, accept him as a tenant despite warnings from the local militia that he might be a spy. They decide that this is probably not true after Mr. Falk sets his pants on fire while sitting in their living room.
January 13, 2005
A federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, has ruled that a suburban county school district's textbook stickers referring to evolution as "a theory not a fact" are unconstitutional.
In ruling that the stickers violate the constitutionally mandated separation between church and state, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that labeling evolution a "theory" played on the popular definition of the word as a "hunch" and could confuse students.
Conversational Reading has an excellent roundup of links dealing with the Salinas, California, library closing.
Slate loves Dave Barry. Me too.
One week, when Tropic converted itself into a kind of Devil's Dictionary, (editor Gene) Weingarten instructed Barry to come up with a definition for "sense of humor." Barry disappeared from the office for a few days. He came back with this: "A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge." Then he promptly went back to writing about exploding livestock.
Britain's Socialist Worker looks at the influence of Trotsky's Literature and Revolution.
David B.'s brilliant Epileptic is the subject of an essay on comics in translation.
The town of Bentonville, Arkansas, will name streets in a new subdivision after authors such as Shakespeare, Tolkien, Chaucer, and, uh, L'Amour.
(I used to live on Scarlett O'Hara Drive. I'm serious.)
The Guardian has an excerpt from one of the few blogs I'd be willing to read the book of, Belle de Jour's The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl.
Poet C. K. Williams is profiled in the New York Times.
The Home Office has given in to pressure from some of Britain's leading writers to hold a meeting with them to discuss their fears that the proposed new law on inciting religious hatred will stifle artistic liberty, it emerged last night.
Salman Rushdie and more than 200 writers of various faiths signed a letter from the writers' group English Pen which was sent to the home secretary, Charles Clarke, earlier this month seeking an "urgent" meeting with him.
English Pen said Mr Rushdie had received a response from home office minister Fiona Mactaggart and that they hoped the meeting would take place within the next week.
A British writer forced into hiding after violent protests by Sikhs led to the cancellation of her play has broken her silence and defended her work.
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti has received death threats over her play Behzti, depicting rape and murder in a Sikh temple.
The Berkeleyan interviews film critic David Thomson, author of the recently released The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood.
Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times had a bit of fun at my expense, saying what a ridiculous crush the author has on Nicole Kidman. I think most people have gone to the movies because they like looking at certain people. It doesn’t mean you’re stalking Edward Norton and have plans to make him yours. You find him attractive or appealing. We’ve always gone to the movies to see attractive people.
I've been giggling about this all morning. I had a moment of holyfuckfreakout when I grabbed the paper this morning, though, because they didn't use the naked photo. Now I'm convinced the photographer just took it for his "private collection." And, sadly, I'm still only one down on my goal to appear naked in every Chicago publication. Sun Times, it's your turn next.
The San Francisco Chronicle weighs in on the "Guide for the Mexican Migrant" comic book controversy. Unfortunately, it looks like the American government is standing by its policy of relying on the labor of undocumented immigrants to support its economy, while refusing to grant any of those workers the most basic human rights. USA! USA! USA!
I love it when the good guys win. Despite the best efforts of a yoga instructor named Pius, the Bozeman (Montana) School District unanimously decided not to remove the Louise Rennison adolescent-fiction book On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God from the shelves of a middle school library. Bozeman Daily Chronicle reporter Gail Schontzler seems to be having a bit of fun with this story:
The title's message is "misleading, degrading and harmful to the minds and possibly the safety" of girls, (parent Pius Ruby) said, and could lead to sexually transmitted disease or even suicide.
Ruby's voice quavered as he argued for protecting America's children.
The confusion arose over the term "sex god." Apparently Pius didn't know that was a British slang term for "hunk." What a bloody wanker.
January 12, 2005
Here's your chance to mock the president and help with the tsunami relief fund at the same time.
It's hard to find good rock magazines these days. The two best I've found: The Big Takeover and ROCKRGRL, which is celebrating its tenth birthday tonight.
Celebrities. Is there anything they can't do?
Thanks to Casey Moore for the link.
We've all had enough year-end lists, I know, but PopMatters always does such a great job, I can't resist posting this one.
Lorrie Moore, who is like unto a god to me, has a new story in the New Yorker. (Via Tingle Alley.)
Margaret Atwood's recent invention — a remote book-signing robot, so authors don't have to actually, you know, meet people — gets a well-deserved knock from Neal Pollack. (Atwood, Pollack hilariously and accurately notes, "(has) made a nice career for herself writing one great book and a bunch of boring ones.")
Slate reviews Fay Weldon's latest, Mantrapped.
Hers is a feminism that seems not to like women very much. Men should be rounded up and shot, that's a given. But women aren't any picnic, either. For Weldon, strange creature, is both misanthropist and misogynist. She doesn't hate humans as a race, she hates men and women, as different, specific groups, for different, specific reasons.
The CIA is revising its procedures for clearing the publication of books or articles by currently employed analysts and case officers in the wake of controversy generated by the best-selling book, Imperial Hubris: How the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism.
Proving no one who works at Us Weekly has a soul, a representative uttered the following sentence regarding the breakup of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston: "For a celebrity weekly, this is our tsunami."
New City profiles "the new generation" of Chicago comic book artists (i.e., people who aren't Chris Ware), Jeffrey Brown, Anders Nilsen, John Hankiewicz, and Paul Hornschemeier.
A new plagiarism accusation against The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. I'm considering suing the guy; hell, everybody's doing it.
Tobin Levy attempts to find representation of her 29-year old single self in books that don't make her want to throw up. Good luck, hon.
Derek Kirk Kim is interviewed at NPR for his book Same Difference and Other Stories (read the Bookslut review here). I respect Kim more now that he gracefully answered questions along the lines of, "So, Asian, are ya?"
The parent of a Duxbury (Mass.) Middle School student wants a book banned because he believes it teaches hatred toward Arabs. George Shamma filed a formal complaint about the use of One More River by Lynne Reid Banks in his daughter's reading class after she came to him upset about passages that use expletives and slurs to describe Arabs. He wants it out of the seventh grade reading curriculum and said he may take legal action if it isn't.
The Book-of-the-Month Club is making some drastic changes in an attempt to stop their membership from dwindling down to nothing, reports the New York Times' Edward Wyatt. This comes almost two years after they unveiled the International Book-of-the-Month Club, which apparently wasn't quite the success they'd hoped for. I had sort of forgotten that the Club existed, actually, but they're still around, and they even have a sex/erotica section, where you can order titles like Rebecca Chalker's The Clitoral Truth. Titles like that aren't available just anywhere.
Book #4, the Super Secret Project book is finished and it will appear on another site, sometime in the future. I loved it so much, however, I had serious problems deciding what to read next. Go with the sf-y bits and follow that into a Stanislaw Lem book? Try to find a book that would be equally meaty and try to finally finish The Executioner's Song? Maybe match its whimsical nature with a rereading of Lanark?
The answer came unexpectedly as I checked the ten day forecast for Chicago. Starting Thursday, I have absolutely no plans to leave the apartment for at least a week. Highs of 14? Are you out of your fucking mind? It's settled. I'm reading Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. I only wish I could link specifically to the edition I have, which has the best line from an author bio ever: "Fyodor became acquainted at an early age with misery, misfortune, and death." I also learned that his father was killed by "enraged serfs." It's too bad this edition is out of print.
January 11, 2005
It turns out I spoke too soon. That Lindsay Moran book cover really isn't the worst ever. Honey at Punk Rock Penguin has a collection of even worse ones. (Thanks, Honey.)
Germaine Greer, the feminist author and academic, today packed her bags and quit the Celebrity Big Brother house.
Ms Greer, who was the oldest Big Brother contestant ever to have joined the Channel 4 show, decided to leave after just five days.
Josh reads comic strips so that you don't have to. (Link from The Morning News.)
A sad report from NPR about the looting of Iraq's National Library and Archives.
Whatever I think of Jennifer Baumgardner's book Manifesta (hated it, do dramatic readings from it when I'm drunk, and tend to spit when the title is spoken), my first reaction when I saw the "I had an abortion" t-shirt that she conceived was, "That's fucking brilliant." The t-shirt is still causing controversy (and it's back on sale at Clamor Magazine's website), and Baumgardner is busy with a dozen other projects. She's back with another book that I haven't read yet, Grassroots. Who knows. Maybe it won't be vile. She's interviewed at Alternet about her very full schedule.
There will be a film version of Touching from a Distance, Deborah Curtis' biography of her late husband, Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.
Neil Gaiman isn't so keen on Margaret Atwood's attempt to revolutionize author signing tours.
I would like to go on record as saying that I think Margaret Atwood's remote mechanical book-signing apparatus is the work of the devil, or at least a really really stupid idea.
"Da Vinci Code Fans" should really be the next Bond villian.
A fascinating article at Jewsweek (yes, Jewsweek) about anti-Semitism at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Although displaying or selling anti-Semitic propaganda in Germany is illegal, the fair featured books from a Syrian publisher alleging Jewish involvement in the 9/11 attacks on America, accord