Damn the editors! Damn the bloggers! Damn the torpedoes!

While I did not today get pulled into a world of literary-critical fame and fortune, I did enjoy the Meet The Bloggers Meeting the Editors Who Are Meeting the Bloggers That Met the Editors discussion at the Plain Dealer offices. It was a Psychobilly Democrat who remarked that here he was, a guy in his thirties, "going on a fieldtrip," which was pretty much exactly how it felt, though we never made it past the editorial meeting room, what with the discussion running for 90 minutes straight. (I wouldn't mind heading back there to steal a quick tour of the building, and I'm sort of kicking myself for not sticking around to listen in on the editorial discussion meetings--I mean, really, where did my unemployed ass have to go that was so important?--so I'm sort of hoping these meet-ups become, if not a regular thing, at least a semi-irregular now-and-then thing, even if just to help sate my vague general geeky interest in seeing what goes on under a hood.)

If the thought of bloggers hating on editors for being mainstream media bastards and newspaper folks hating on bloggers for being annoying young upstarts for 90 minutes gives you hives, you can relax. It was a civil, interesting discussion, I thought. (Whether anyone on either side of the table was changed in their views or whatever...I don't know, you'll have to ask them.)

My takeaway? There's room to explore possible avenues for give-and-take between the two groups. And there does exist a desire to do so. The bloggers present had a great interest in what goes on at the paper; the editors present were genuinely curious about what makes "bloggers" tick. Interest and curiosity are not the same thing, of course. If you want to talk hierarchal power dualities (and who doesn't?), it was clear there's still...let's call them feelings of height and feelings of climb about where you'd expect them to be. I'll suggest it was agreed that everybody recognizes that the rules are changing on the fly, and that people have to keep up on their game, lest they make themselves like endzone-bound Ernest Byners.

Also of interest (ready yourself for the abrupt topic shift) was the fact that the meeting was sort of a, how might one say it..."man-fest". A couple women on either side of the table in a room of about twenty-ish people. Nature of the newspaper game? Glaring blogosphere gap? Or just randomly skewed stats? Beats me.

In any case, it was interesting. Maybe someday I'll try chatting up Karen Long, the Plain Dealer's book editor, about, like, books, and reviews, and stuff. Though it probably wouldn't be a great discussion, because it seems like the litbloggers are really supposed to pick a mainstream media critic and just get all antagonistic up in their business? But mostly I just enjoy her columns, so the sum total of our discussion would probably wind up being me saying "So you like books too, huh?" and her nodding and then me nodding back. Yeah, I'm so not cut out for this.

If losing one's job means becoming more active in the local community, then I can't wait to see what happens when I become homeless

This one's via Meet the Bloggers. Tomorrow (Monday, July 10) at 2:30 PM the editors of the Cleveland Plain Dealer will meet with local area bloggers before the paper's 4:00 PM content meeting.

I'm planning on attending, assuming I can wake my dead-beat unemployed ass up in time to get downtown. Really I've no idea what I expect to gain from the meeting. Which is fine. Mostly I'm just curious to see what all happens out there in the world during the 9-5 stretch of the day that I've been pretty much locked away from for so long. Should be interesting.

Of course, I'm also interested in not shaving. Or doing laundry. Or really much of anything else. All the more reason to curb the impulse towards decrepitude as quickly as possible, I suppose. Even if "getting involved" feels sort of weirdly like "cheating". H'mm..

The Day I Became an Economic Casualty

So, let's say you just got laid off from your job...

Two me, smart and dumb

The other night, friend Chris and I were discussing the books we're reading. I mentioned that I was reading Mary Gaitskill's Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and that between it and Because They Wanted To, the short story collection of hers that I read last year, I'd decided that I really need to give Veronica another shot, because I'm loving everything else of hers so much that I'm thinking I really must have not been there when I read Veronica, what with it having elicited within me response that essentially amounted to "Eh..." I mentioned I'd maybe pick up a copy for the permanent collection when the paperback comes out. Good a time as any.

Well, looks like the paperback release date is July 18. Good times. I'd say expect further discussion about this book in a month or two, but by now you know better, because you probably realize that any promises I make about things I'm going to talk about on this blog are damn lies. I'll explain my behavior in a couple weeks.

JCU prof wins Premio Grinzane Cavour prize for best debut novel

Congrats to Steven Hayward:

Steven Hayward, English professor at John Carroll University, was in Turin, Italy, recently to accept the Premio Grinzane Cavour prize for best debut novel for "The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke."

The prize, awarded to promising young writers, is among the most famous Italian literature awards. Past recipients include Jose Saramago, Gunter Grass, Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee.

I went to John Carroll before Steven started there, but I've heard nothing but nice things about him. (And I did make it to a couple of the Canadian writers readings he set up this spring.)

Howevermany Books Challenge Round-up #2

So I suppose, after four months, and in the middle of a four day weekend, it's probably time for another 2006 reading list update. I imagine I might miss a few, borrowed books, library books that have since been returned, etc; also, the exact order may be a bit mixed up. But that's okay. I'll fake it, if I have to.

Why run through this seemingly elitist exercise every couple (or more) months? It's an excuse for myself to keep a running tally of what I've read during the year, because I've grown curious about keeping track of such things, because I feel it helps to lodge books better in my memory. And by doing it this way, I don't have to edit the blog's sidebar code every single time I finish a book. (Which I imagine non-Blogger blogging software platforms might make easier, which is more reason for me to consider jumping ship at some point, someday, maybe, when I cure myself of my laziness.) It's an excuse to think back on some of the books I've read, to see what's risen or fallen in my mind over time. I guess there's the possibility that seeing the order in which I've read books might be illuminating, but I kind of doubt it. There's also the opportunity to say a word or two about books that might have fallen through the cracks, and in today's case, it's an excuse to set some things straight between you and me, namely regarding the potentially misbegotten belief that all I do all day is read smart-people books and think highly of myself for being such a smartypants smart-people's smart person mcsmartsalot Smartstone von Smartborgenson. It's a chance to maybe make up for nearly two weeks worth of slow blogging with a huge lump sum payment, which maybe nobody will read anyway but at least I'll feel better about myself for it. Also, while cowering in sight of the behemoth that is my To Be Read pile (which has actually now been moved to a new bookshelf, and is in fact now even neater than it was to Sam's eyes, and of which photos are certain to surface on this blog sometime in the near future), Jen wondered just how fast a reader I actually am; in answer to her question I can say that no, I definitely do not, in fact can not, read that many books in a month, or perhaps even in a year. Yeah, I can safely acknowledge that if in any given timeframe I do maybe read more books than many people do, it's not so much because I'm a fast reader, but more because I'm devoted to spending lots of my free time reading books, typically to the exclusion of other activities, like socializing in bars, doing laundry, or sleeping, which, ultimately, makes me sort of lame, and therefore, not an object at all worthy of anybody's envy or self-comparison.

Finally, it remains my firm opinion that for the community of readers, all the reviews and critiques and criticisms in the world don't mean jack squat crap in the face of an enthusiastic recommendation from a fellow reader whose likes and dislikes and interests are similar to your own. So let these round-ups be my way of helping you decide whether or not you think my future suggestions are worth your attention. If they are, welcome. If not--no harm, no foul.

Wow. That sounded way more dramatic than I intended.

A'el. Anyway. Here's some books. I liked some of them a lot.

11. Francine Prose, Blue Angel.
    
    Though I have admired, enjoyed, and largely enthusiastically agreed with the couple reviews/essays of hers I've read, I just don't think her fiction is meant for me. It's something about theory vs. execution, I guess.



12. Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans.
    
    It's true: I am a sort-of raving Ishiguro fanboy. (Also.)



13. Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop.
    
    Cause for one of my finest blog headlines ever. Also I think I need to re-read this one very soon, and that it's very important I do so, since I've pretty much given up on the writing front recently; I say pretty much because I know I can't give up, not really, but the outlook (and my own sense of devotion) sure feels bleak right now. Not really writing at all for two months will do that. On the upside, I've lost a little weight. So maybe someday I can at least be a skinny failure.



14. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.
    
    It was a must-read after I read it last year. It remained a must-read after I re-read it this year. Easily one of my favorite books. Hand me a flagpole, and I'll raise this book on it, and wave it around in the air, like I just don't care. It's that good.



15. William T. Vollmann, The Ice-Shirt.
    
    A bit of a Vollmann debate broke out recently in the blogosphere when Levi Asher at Lit-Kicks called Vollmann overrated and Edward Champion and Scott Esposito rushed in for the defense.
    
    Thinking back on the (relatively little) Vollmann I've read this year, Europe Central and The Ice-Shirt, I think I'm currently placing myself somewhere in the middle of the opinion spectrum. (A reasonable but honestly dull and safe place, I'll admit.) While there are portions of Europe Central that will hold up well against anything in your collection--namely what I referred to in my post-read summary as a "loose trilogy of chapters sort of in the middle", a chunk of the book which, were it to be published as a separate novella or story collection, I would recommend without pausing to inhale--there really is a hell of a lot of muck to get through to get to the good stuff.
    
    It's true, as Jeff suggested, that I need to read some of Vollmann's non-historical stuff. Without doing so it's probably not fair for me to make grand pronouncements about the guy. But I'll tentatively go ahead and say anyway that Vollmann is, honestly, a smart person kind of writer, the kind of guy who only lit elitists might be bothered enough by to bother with. Even though, at times, he really does deserve a far wider readership than he might currently have. He sure doesn't make it easy for someone like me to recommend him to casual readers, though.
    
    Paradoxical? Yes. I guess he just troubles me and challenges me and I look forward to reading more of his stuff. Someday. And while there's books in my collection I'd hand you before any of his books, I wouldn't block your way if you decided to go for the Vollmann, instead.



16. Stephen Dixon, Tisch.


17. Stephen Dixon, Gould.


18. Stephen Dixon, I.
    
    Stephen Dixon is also a little paradoxical, maybe, in that, I'll suggest, he really is far more of a "popular" type of writer than he may initially seem to the casual reader, far more humane and interested in humanity and the human condition and communicating to you and with you about that condition than his frankly sometimes awkward prose style and sentence structures and plot outlines and surface concerns and endless repetition and alternate versions of events and his lists and his ands might indicate, and that for the whatever and ever smart-people-book-like trappings of his books his work should be enjoyed by many, many more people than it currently is.
    
    And while I would not suggest any of the above three books as a starting place for anyone interested in reading some Stephen Dixon--Interstate remains the book I'd press firmly into your open hand without hesitation, because it is essentially incredible and harrowing and plain-spoken and complex and fantastic and almost obscenely depressing in its very nature--I'd say that the way immersing oneself in the various writings of a single author can be richly rewarding is especially true of Dixon, whose writing, when quickly glanced at, might seem sort of samey, is really more varied and intricately and individually textured than might be immediately apparent. I'm not saying every sentence of his drips with honey, but I wouldn't hesitate to suggest his books have features in common with bee hives.
    
    Has my opinion grown with time and retrospect? Yeah. Will I continue to work my way through his back catalogue? *shake shake* All six books on my TBR pile point to "Yes".



19. Dave King, The Ha-Ha.
    
    I liked this book. And I'm remembering now the reading Dave gave here a couple months back. I'm also remembering his description of the book he's working on now. I'm thinking now I'm looking forward to reading that next book when it comes out.



20. Allegra Goodman, Intuition.
    
    Left me feeling sort of muddled. It's probably not a good book to read if you really like mice. Did make me want to buy a lab coat. Uhm...uhm.



21. Philip Roth, Everyman.
    
    Read it in a day. Found it painful.



22. Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace.
    
    I never said anything about this one after I finished it, which is a shame, because it was a good and thought-provoking book, and I really wish I had a better record of at least some of my thoughts about it. If you are interested in historical fiction, and my thoughts about Vollmann have scared you away from his stuff, I'd say Russell's book would be a good one to add to your reading list. I wasn't truly in love with all of it, but what I liked I did like quite a bit. The structure's a bit beguiling at times, but there's a rather brilliantly painful bit near the end that will stick itself in your skull and stay there for a while. You won't want it there, but it's good it's there, because it should be there, I'll say.
    
    That said, I do want to read her other books. Eventually.



23. Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code.
    
    I...uhm...see, it's like...then...there was...this...and...stuff...and...
    
    Oh, hell with it: I enjoyed this book, and screw you if you think less of me for that. Why?
    
    Because there's nothing at all wrong with a decent piece of popular fiction.
    
    Because even the finest libraries have restrooms where even the smartest people have to go poop.
    
    Because Audrey Tatou is really cute, no matter what type of movie she's in.
    
    Because this book wouldn't be such a thorn in the sides of so many people if people on both sides of the "opinion debate" surrounding it weren't for some reason taking it all so bloody damned seriously.
    
    Because if people could stop calling it "factually wrong" long enough to think about it, they'd realize it's really not so uninteresting as a piece of alternate history fiction.
    
    Because if it wasn't for big plain dumb fun pieces of "popular fiction"--the space operas of David Brin, the thriller novels of Dean Koontz, the horror novels of Stephen King--I would not today be interested in literature.
    
    Because I said so.



24. George Saunders, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil.
    
    I wasn't too crazy about this one. . . . . .



25. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground.
    
    I kicked off my Summer of Dostoevsky project with this one, which I'd last read about eight years ago. I don't think I got it that first time. I don't think I got it this time, either, though I know I was better equipped to deal with it this time, by which I mean more willing and able to read a book for what's on the page rather than what I want there to be on the page. I will probably read it again before the summer's over.



26. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler.
    
    I think I was drunk when I read it. Or just tired. Or something.



27. Richard Ford, The Sportswriter.
    
    Strangely, though I honestly enjoyed the book, I feel no compelling urge to read the sequel. Can someone tell me: is Independence Day better? Is it more-of-same? What's the selling point here? Am I weird for sort of feeling like it's just not a high priority for me to read the next book?



28. Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman.
    
    Pretty much what I said then. I keep forgetting to press this into the hands of my Lost group, though.



29. Yannick Murphy, Here They Come.
    
    I sort of keep forgetting that I read this.



30. George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation.
    
    . . . . . .but damn if I didn't totally adore most all of the stories in this Saunders book.



31. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
    
    I just finished it today. Every bit as relevant today as it's ever been. I'll have more to say about it once I shake off the spell it's had me under for the last month. (I spent far too long reading it. Not good for the ol' mental and emotional health.)

You could write volumes about the importance of all of the things that Dostoevsky doesn't say in Crime and Punishment

 

I need to hear a symphony

You'll have to bear with me for a bit. I'm sort of too bummed out to deal with it.

Pynchon, pullon, lovon, squeezon

Bud Parr at Chekhov's Mistress just read his first Thomas Pynchon novel, The Crying of Lot 49.

I know that Pynchon fans are diehards, but I somehow feel like I missed the boat. [...]

Crying moved pretty fast and its farcical surreal story line made me not worry too much whether I was getting the references. I think I did get them, I think I think, but there are several books on this book, so I can only assume that one would have to read it with an eye to uncovering more than what's on the surface to get everything. This is not a book I'm interested in doing that on. Perversely, the book's shortness (along with the issue above) makes me not want to delve in too deep.

My own path through Pynchon has involved mostly false starts. I started with V. which I read a chunk of before I gave up on it. I forget why. I'm pretty sure I had no idea what was going on. Then sometime later I tried reading Gravity's Rainbow before I gave up halfway through. (Well, truth was I gave up after about ten pages. I really loved the first ten pages. But I had to work for them--like, in a pulling out the old English major hat kind of way. When I realized it would take four years for me to read the book that way I decided to coast, thinking I'd get what I'd get and to hell with the rest. What I got was not very much, and then a headache, and then a resounding desire to quit. Which I did. I think maybe the book was about a penis.) Then just last year I read Crying and I read it in a day and I think my reaction was similar to Bud's.

Thing is, I think I like the idea of Pynchon. I recognize and acknowledge that he's a very important writer. I mean, it's not like it's just anyone who can claim to be Thomas Pynchon, right. I can't. You can't. (Unless you are, in fact, Thomas Pynchon, the famous author, in which case, OH MY GOD I LOVE YOUR WORK WILL YOU SIGN MY CHEST?!?!? K THNKZ PLZ BYE!) But my experience with his writing has lead me to suspect that it's all much better in theory, for me. Modernist, post-modernist, Saussurian Seussian, whatever the heck he is, I feel like he's not necessarily out to tell me a good story, which, when which urge it's without, literature doesn't feel all quite right and there to me. It's not that he's going so far as to use a communications medium to explicitly not communicate anything to me, so much as it is that there's a signal-to-noise ratio which is tipped out of balance in a way that doesn't please me so much as the TiVo menu summary suggested it would. ("4 stars. Action/Adventure. A man travels through a war-torn country on a voyage of self discovery.")

Plus there's the fact that I'm not that smart anyway and I miss enough stuff under the best conditions that when missing things becomes part of the actual fabric of the experience of reading the book, well. See, I was going to include this as a humorous little self-deprecating parenthetical, but then I remembered I've really been thinking about this a lot lately, about how it is we strive to become better, more attentive, more attuned and explicative readers (because if you're a lit blogger and you think you've got it all figured out by now you're a huge lying asshole and your blog probably sucks) and just how far behind where I feel like I should be I often think I am, and how the last year and a half of reading has lead me to constantly question not only the literature but more and more my own ability to relate to that literature, and how all that mixing itself up in a boy's mind starts to make the word "discouraging" sound like a pleasant bedtime story, a state to aspire to rise up towards, and, and. It's almost enough to make a lit blogger want to hang up his hat and go start a politics blog; at least there, nobody, least alone the blogger him or herself, expects deep attention to the struggling subtle unspoken. Rock out with your red, white, and blue cock out.

Still, for all that, I'm sometimes tempted to rope some friends into doing a good slow group reading of Gravity's Rainbow, just to see what's to be gotten through teamwork, because 10,000 Pynchon Fans Can't All Be Mark E. Smith, right? And when news arises that there's a new Pynchon novel on the horizon, you can bet I'm going to let you know about it.

To Be Read pile, June 06

To Be Read pile, June 06
Originally uploaded by thegrue76.

"Ambition if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others." - Susan Sontag

Li'l Raskol

So I started my Summer of Dostoevsky this week but through a case of bad schedule management this is also the week of the annual Summer Attempt at Doing Real Exercise Outside in which I've reached the "Oh my god I can't believe I'm still doing this, when can I go back to being a video game playing lazy ass who eats the entire f'n bag" stage, so that by the end of the day, after work and the physical-moving thing and cleaning up and expending the last of my energy for the day on eating something that might have some semblance of nutritional value, when I try to sit down with good ol' Uncle F to tha Y-O-Dor I'm pretty much both baked and fried crispy. In five days I've read seventy pages. I am so weak.

Needless to say, I've also slacked off on blogging, but that's okay, because blog post frequency doesn't matter anymore:

Daily posts are a legacy of a Web 1.0 mindset and early Web 2.0 days (meaning 12 months ago!). The pressure around posting frequency will ultimately become a significant barrier to the maturity of blogging. Here are 10 reasons why.

Word! Word, I'll go so far as to say, up. So from now on when I disappear on these retarded little excursions of mine into real-world activity--don't worry, the exercise thing will go away soon I'm sure, I'm already like three days past my expected attention span for this sort of thing--don't think of it as me being anti-productive, but actually as me being the saviour of the internet. Oh yes: my will be done. Where my will right now equates to my very soon becoming impossibly comfortable once again with my own lethargy.

(Link, incidentally, via Jim Eastman, who is a far better blogger than me. Exhibit A: his thoughts on coffee science and coffee culture. Exhibit B: pondering his first two hundred and ten minute DJ set. Exhibit C: his recap of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival.)

2005 RTA Bus Card Project

Congrats, Austin! Now, if we only could get the RTA to let Austin do some graphic work for the busses, too...

Well okay then

All this week, Elizabeth Crane has been leading a discussion about George Saunders's In Persuasion Nation. I'm sort of a tool and didn't get my hands on a copy of the book until today; so I'm not shooting my mouth off on her blog (which is for the best anyway), but I do look forward to reading through the chat after I finish the book.

A few weeks ago I read The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil and got sort of grumpy and not-so pleased over it. All is forgiven, though, because of "My Flamboyant Grandson", the second story in Nation. And then there's the third story, "Jon", which, well...forgiveness to burn, because fuck, wow. Both stories smack of a painful yet funny Highly Unprobable And Yet Not So Unlikely Truth that works really very well.

So go to the bookstore and read "Jon". You'll forget you're standing there blocking the aisle. It's okay.

Because I am nothing if I am not one who strives to please the ladies, while giving free lessons in the importance of non-ambiguous sentence structure

Go write about sex with Erin O'Brien.

*cough*

(For more info, click here, search on the resulting page for "sex", and click that link. Or you may click here, if you like your more-information-getting to be a bit more...vanilla.)

Dead-tree-media-and-possibly-antifeminist-magazine gets it right. Wait, huh? What? Is it the day of the beast or something?

Good advice from the Good Housekeeping "Book Babes":

Q: My daughter is reading chick lit, but it doesn't speak to me. Which books can you recommend about romantic relationships for women of a certain age?

A: ... If you would rather read fiction, you can't go wrong with This Is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers. Among the contributors are Francine Prose, Jennifer Egan and Aimee Bender. The quality stories avoid commercial pandering. No Prada wearing here!

The book, which is edited by Elizabeth Merrick, comes out in August. The same day, coincidentally, as Jennifer Egan's new novel The Keep. Which fact I'm just going to keep mentioning over and over again, so if you forget it, don't worry, I'll mention it again sometime after I mention again that Mark Z. Danielewski's newest novel, Only Revolutions, is coming out in September, the wait for which said book is pretty much making me metaphorically totally lose my shit.

(And anyway, is Good Housekeeping the anti-feminist one or is it the subversive one? I don't keep good track of my anti-anti-feminist publications. But my hunch tells me anything with Sarah Jessica Parker on it is...not exactly swimming against, or even cross, soci-economic currents.)

Three things about Here They Come

I just finished Yannick Murphy's Here They Come. A few quick thoughts:

1. If they made a movie out of this book, I think the movie would be "written" and directed by Harmony Korine. It would be a very strange, disturbing movie, full of weird gross ickiness and shocking things and it would sort of hurt, in a way different than the book itself hurts. It would mistranslate the moments of beauty that are present in the book but it would also probably affect the viewer in its own also good but unique ways. I have no legs. I have no legs. I have no legs. I have no legs.


2. It's funny reading this right after The Third Policeman, for two reasons, one of which deals with the endings of either book, so I won't go into that, the other of which is that after reading the books back to back one can't help but wonder if, were one to rub the two books against each other vigorously for an extended period of time, one would wind up with two entirely new books, The Third Come and Here They Policeman. Me, I figure by now I'm 28 percent car.


3. Here They Come was a recent topic of discussion at the LitBlog Co-Op site. While I haven't read the posts or comments yet, one can safely assume their general quality to not low. Do check it out.

Speaking of Mark Z. Danielewski...

...this quite literally just in via a Google Alert. You'll want to read the first paragraph and the closing paragraph. Which I'll just go ahead and excerpt for you because I'm that nice.

When Mark Z. Danielewski's second novel, "Only Revolutions," is published in September, it will include hundreds of margin notes listing moments in history suggested online by fans of his work. Nearly 60 of his contributors have already received galleys of the experimental book, which they're commenting about in a private forum at Mr. Danielewski's Web site, www.onlyrevolutions.com.

...

Mr. Danielewski said that the physical book would persist as long as authors figure out ways to stretch the format in new ways. "Only Revolutions," he pointed out, tracks the experiences of two intersecting characters, whose narratives begin at different ends of the book, requiring readers to turn it upside down every eight pages to get both of their stories. "As excited as I am by technology, I'm ultimately creating a book that can't exist online," he said. "The experience of starting at either end of the book and feeling the space close between the characters until you're exactly at the halfway point is not something you could experience online. I think that's the bar that the Internet is driving towards: how to further emphasize what is different and exceptional about books."

Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet anticipation.

The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, written in 1939 or 1940 but not published until after the author's death in the 1960s, is now better known as that book that showed up for one second in an episode of Lost, and was touted in interviews by folks associated with the show as being a book that would help the reader figure out what was happening on the show; I think the word that was used was it would give the viewer more "ammunition" for the task.

As a fan of the show of sorts--I think it's a great premise that takes too long to accomplish anything, but that when it's on, it's really fuckin' on--I heard of the book, and it's semi-obscure nature, the fact that it sold more copies since it's prime-time appearance than it did in the previous forty years combined. I didn't plan on reading it though, because I don't get into the viral marketing aspect of shows or games. (Not that I have anything against it--I think the alternate reality game type stuff Maureen's been involved with is fascinating. And given a few more hours in the day, I'd probably be on the message boards myself.)

But when the book's sitting on the shelf at the used book store for five bucks? Well, yeah, I'm game. Curiosity and affordability got me into the book. The fact that it's a crazy piece of writing kept me in it.

This book is totally worth reading, even if you're not a fan of Lost. (If you are a fan of the series, it does give you another lens through which to see the book. It is, after all, fun looking for clues as to just why this book is so important to the events on that island.) The book is somehow simultaneously hilarious and terrifying; it's straight-forward but absolutely surreal. At times it feels like Kafka and at times it feels like Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and at other times it feels like something else entirely I can't even quite identify. Maybe something Nabokov-ish.

Mostly when reading it I possessed the strange feeling that I was reading a book that really had no right to exist in the context that it did. Like somehow there's natural laws against it. Or at least that there ought to be. But that it's to our benefit, of sorts, that there aren't.

Anyway I'm obviously still all of a jumble mentally over it so I'll shut up. At least for a little while. I feel like I'll be coming back to this one soon.

You know you want to play, too

TDAOC visualized through this program. (Click the image for the larger version.)

Two other lit-blog examples.

Academihottie

"Academihottie" is my favorite new word.

I tell you, kids these days

Over on LiveJournal, there's a thread going about books that cause the reader to lose the will to live. And not in the "Wow, The Trick is to Keep Breathing is so depressing, and somehow that is the most awesome thing ever" sort of way, but in the "Oh my god, this romance novel makes me want to shoot nailguns at my eyes" way.

Which is all fine and whatever except my informal review of the comments shows that The Catcher in the Rye is the number one most hated book amongst those who commented. Now, don't let me mislead you into believing that I'm a Salinger fanatic. But isn't it reading the book sometime in your teens and falling in love with it sort of a prerequisite to being truly alive? Or am I totally off base on this one?

Also, the fact that there's votes against On the Road makes me want to beat someone. I mean...really. And just now I was going to go find something I agreed with and saw the vote against Kazuo Ishiguro and I got so mad I exploded my computer with my brain, so, no agreement tonight.

Synchronicity. Or, synergy. Or, pure coincidence

You can't fake this sort of thing:

1. I'm currently reading The Sportswriter by Jeff Ford. It's a book about a sportswriter, who observes a lot of things other than sports.

2. The current guest blogger at the Powell's "Home of the Lit Stars" Bookstore Blog is Chris Ballard, a real life sportswriter who has recently published a non-sportswriting book, The Butterfly Hunter, in which he observes a lot of people doing strange jobs that aren't related to sports.

I haven't read Chris's book but I like his posts and so well I guess we know what that means: one more author I need to check out sometime before I die.

As if I was ever here to begin with

Hey! Hi! Blog! Wow, neat. Yeah. Ok, so I'm back, after a slightly extended leave of technical absence. User error plus forgetting to google the internets equals me feeling really dumb.

But you say your forgive me? That's sweet of you.

So what have I been up to? Uh, not much. I'll tell you that I'm working my way through Richard Ford's The Sportswriter right now, and just in time, too, since word on the street has it Ford will be putting out the third and final Frank Bascombe book this fall. Maybe I'll catch up by then, or maybe not, I don't know and ain't gonna fuss over it.

You can probably insert the standard response here: I'm enjoying this book more than I expected I'd enjoy a book about a guy who writes about sports. I'm intrigued enough to want to know where the story's going, and am plenty addicted to the brilliant one-liners Ford scatters every couple pages. Bascombe is an interesting character, if middle aged white guy characters are your thing--or really if writing is your thing, because Bascombe's got things to say about that. Neither of which, actually, come to think of it, are really necessarily my thing, I think: I'm too young and too self-conscious to feel like I can go too far reading books about suburban middle aged white guys, but there's certainly room on the shelf for such books when they're about more than that, which this one is; and as for fictional writers talking about writing, well, eh, metafiction tomfoolery or striving to make a point about life, you know? I guess I'm cynical, more than I realize I am, and Ford sort of cuts through that.

And well I really need to get through this book so I can go on and read the sequel, Independence Day, just so I can get out of my system that subconscious belief that a Wil Smith summer blockbuster was based on a high-profile literary novel, the belief that goes on buggin' me every time I see the book at Half Price Books.

A few other scattered items of note:

• Jeff at Syntax of Things reminds us that Douglas Coupland has a new book out. Jeff also, on an unrelated matter, does a little investigating, uncovering truth that, I promise, will hurt your brain, a little, but in the good way.


• Beth at the Powell's blog breaks it down for you: Reading is totally sweet.


• Good feature at Pitchfork about all that computo-musix-figurin' technology on the internets right now. Not that I'd know anything about any of that.


• Dave Lucas reviews the new Seamus Heaney book and finds that it rocks the soggy peat right off your face.

Otherwise: I'm still planning on devoting a month this summer to the beast known as poetry. Of course, I'm also planning on devoting my summer to reading Dostoevsky's last five novels. Two goals enter, one goal leaves, is all I'm sayin'.

Not so deep thought for the night

Jennifer Egan--author of the very fine novel Look at Me--should have a new book coming out this year. Awesome! If victory dances were jars of salsa, I'd totally eat two jars of salsa right now.

Deep thought for the night

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day offer competing visions of consciousness and self-awareness.

In Dostoevsky's book, the mind is like a man standing between two mirrors that face each other. He stares into the long tunnel of his own faces, each of which stares back at him, each with a different expression. All while the face in the very back tells all the other faces to go to hell.

Ishiguro's vision is that of a single mirror. But here, the stretch of mirror at eye level is stained incomprehensible by old, forgotten, misplaced tears.

It's all in the timing

As for George Saunders's The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, I sort of feel like this book might have been funnier before Stephen Colbert, in joking about the President to the President's face, proved that satire is sort of dead. I mean, what role does absurdity have in an already far too absurd political landscape? We all went Ooh and Ahh and stated that, boy, that Colbert sure does have very large testicles, saying such nasty things about the President! But it's not like anybody expected him to change anything. It's not like the President woke up the next day and said, "Wow, gosh, I'm doing a shitty job, here. I better fix that." No, we weren't looking for that. Just the laughs, please.

Anyway, the book, there's humor in there, but for me, it wasn't so much about what was being depicted, because really, it's sort of all obvious. Hey! Leaders are sometimes crazy! Sometimes the media just makes noise! We're spurred to corrective action for the sake of our own pleasure! Mud is sort of gross! I don't feel like the book shed light on anything. While there were some great turns of phrase--the main source, for me, of the book's Funny Ha-Ha--nothing really new comes of the story.

That said, I didn't mind reading it. It's a short book, and when satire works for me anymore, it's when it's at it's shortest. Dive in, get the laugh, get out. (The Onion is never as funny as its headlines.) There's some mystery, here; I don't know what to make of the Creator, but I guess I also don't care to dwell on it to figure it out, either. So. I'll suggest the book's worth reading, anyway, even if for no other reason than maybe you can come back and tell me what I'm missing.

Author trading cards

No, dude, seriously. Author trading cards!

Maintenance

For the three people who may not have given up on this blog yet: there may be some network flakiness this week as I may be changing Web hosting providers. So if it seems like the site's gone, it's just hiding, temporarily.

On a related note, anybody care to suggest cheap but decent hosting providers? I figure I'm pushing about zero gazillionty terabytes of data each day, if that helps you get an idea of what I'm looking for.

You know you and your litblog have made it when...

...you get a tag named in your honor at MetaxuCafe. Which pretty much means I, and this blog, shall not be "making it" any time soon. Because, see, one would have to blog things. Things worth tagging, see. Which I don't particularly do. Unless slumping becomes taggable. Which, let's not let it come to that.

I will take a moment to tell you that I really liked Philip Roth's new book Everyman, but I liked it in the way that, I theorize, a touristic masochist might like a good swift kick to the junk. However much one might like or appreciate the experience, there's really no way to honestly label it as "pleasurable". Or, really, "good". Call it what you want, but the fact remains: it hurts like a bitch. And may cause nausea. And, for the truly touristic masochist, once may be more than enough.

Uh, beyond that, nothing's really inspiring right now. I read Dave King's The Ha-Ha and I liked it, and I liked his reading a week or so ago, and it was all very nice. I read Allegra Goodman's Intuition and, well, I'm sort of eh about it, without much knowing why. Now I'm reading Mary Doria Russell's A Thread of Grace. It's good. But I've been in this slump, see--a blog slump, a life slump, a work slump, an "I just finished writing a story that might be the best thing I've ever done or maybe it actually sucks all rocks and maybe it makes me look like a huge tool but now I don't know how to follow it up anyway so I'm gonna eat all the ice cream and bleah" slump. So maybe I'm just not too inclined right now to be inspired by what might otherwise be inspiring. Plus you can add "I just got outbid on an item on eBay" to my slump list. Bleah!

Otherwise...uhm...I'm thinking about dealing with The Poetry Question here for a while. To shake things up. Like in a really diligent studious overachieving "I'm actually gonna say smart people sorts of things" sort of way. Like maybe for one month this summer. In a sort of "setting aside all other worldly concerns" sort of way. All worldly concerns, except maybe for delicious nachos. Because I really do enjoy nachos.

Two people. One mission.

One's an actor who's got the whole world...in his hands! He's got the whole wide world...in his hands!

The other is the writer of the extremely good TDAOC-endorsed novel Look At Me.

What do Steve Buscemi and Jennifer Egan have in common? Click here to find out.

Actually, no, don't even bother. Just go rent Con-Air instead. And then read Look At Me. And then imagine your own punchline. Cuz, I got nothin'.

Wind

Pretty.

Shhhhh...

Dave King--author of The Ha-Ha, which I just finished, and was ultimately surprised by the fact that it ultimately surprised me--will be in town at the Jospeh-Beth at Legacy Village Friday night at 7:00 PM.

The best sentence you'll read on the Internet this week

"The universe is bigger than a breadbox, cheaper than beer, thinner than blood."

Score

Cleveland indieshop bookstore Mac's Backs now has a nifty website. Recommendations, events listings, current book club picks...awesome. Check it out.

Yup, there's nothing short about Battlefield Earth

Elizabeth Crane--whose short story collection All This Heavenly Glory I totally endorse--is starting a book club. It's gonna be all about short stories. And it might be the greatest thing ever.

You will sacrifice three mindless hours of your life for this, and don’t even try to tell me they’re not there. I know what you do and I know it because I do it too. You will report back here on June 1 for discussion, or even before if you like. You do not have to be my friend. You only have to like to read. And you will link this to many and several people who you believe could be convinced of my theory that the short story is due for a Travolta-level comeback minus that weird Scientology movie.

Hells yeahs! Short stories are totally badass, and you don't even have to buy them five dollar shakes to get them to take you home with them. And anyway, you need a little fiction in your life. Looks good on ya.

Clicky clickity click to find out more and to learn what's the first pick.

Election coverage

Worth reading.

I don't think I'll be waiting too much longer before I pick up her books

Novelist & memoirist Thrity Umrigar--who I've been meaning to read for a while, and who I believe currently lives in the Cleveland area (seems so!)--is guest blogging this week at the Powell's Blog.

Snip:

On television, shouting matches between tweedy, effete liberals and snarly, red-meat conservatives masquerade as news shows. The lines between information and entertainment are so blurred that we have coined a new term — infotainment. The grotesque reality shows are not realistic at all — unless you count surrealism to be a form of realism. The White House pays journalists to plant stories in the press and no one seems to care very much. And in the business world, euphemisms thrive — downsizing, restructuring, involuntary attrition. These euphemisms have one objective — to bury the truth.

Good stuff. Click! Click!

Sketch-notes for English majors on Stephen Dixon's I.

Things that are I. (also known as, several reasons why the book I. is more fascinating than it may seem at first glance):

• The title of the book I., a novel by Stephen Dixon


• Stephen Dixon, who the reader is implicitly (intimate nature of the novel) and/or directly (through external readings--interviews, etc--in which facts of story correlate with facts of Stephen Dixon's real life) invited to compare main character of book I. with


• I. as initial of the main character's name from book I., only given name/only provided identity for character throughout entire book


• I. as the shape of the open hole in the cover of the book, through which we "see" (note I./eye homonym) Stephen Dixon/I.; title of book as literal absence from book--I. is "literally" not in the "literature"; I. as literal hand-hold on the story (fingers slip through cover while holding book open on lap)


• I. as the open hole in the cover of the book, through which the image of Stephen Dixon "sees" us, as readers, and comments directly on our relationship to literature as literature (see also, breaking through the fourth wall, exemplified by brief flirtation with first person viewpoint beginning on page 101, followed by later (p. 123) blurring of line between first person and third person in introduction of "I." as name of main character, who had previously only been referred to as "he")

I. Yi Yi

So I've cut the Stephen Dixon love-in short, and by short I mean after three books, which is really still a pretty healthy amount of Stephen Dixon, even when none of the three books are Frog. I'm glad I finally read I. because it looks like McSweeney's will be publishing the book's sequel this summer. At least, Amazon says so. So that's pretty exciting.

Right now I'm reading The Ha-Ha by Dave King, because Austin mentioned a while back that King would be coming to Cleveland, and I was pretty sure I'd heard of the book before, and it sounded interesting, and I like seeing author readings, so. One plus one and all. Dave King will be around town Thursday through Saturday; I'll be crashing the Friday night reading at Joseph Beth Booksellers.

As for the book, I'm not too far into it, but I'm shocked to say that this book might feel more enclosed and interior and cooped-up and downright claustrophobic than any of the Stephen Dixon I've been reading, which is shocking because it's hard to get much more cooped-up and interior than Stephen Dixon (who oftentimes doesn't seem at all interested in acknowledging even the existence of a world outside the focus of his main character) unless, of course, you write a book in which the narrator literally can not speak or write but wants to very badly, which is what Dave King's gone and done, so, you know: victory, of sorts. Two perhaps obviously completely different types of "claustrophobic" literature. Also, neither of which type is "bad", nor should my comments be meant to be taken as negative reactions to the stories involved--though I guess it's maybe a little obvious I'm a, ah, fan of Dixon's work. Though I suspect this "cooped-upness" might be part of why he's not ragingly popular even amongst the literati-sect: we spend all our time in rooms, it's natural that eventually we want our literature to say things about rooms themselves, not just what's happening inside the mind of a character inside those rooms.

Maybe.

Ask TDAOC: "is kaavya viswanathan sexy?"

Hi kids. As a service to my readership, I'm starting a new feature here, called Ask TDAOC, in which I answer questions that appear in my search engine referral logs. The first question for Ask TDAOC comes from someone out there in Internetland...in fact, it could be you:

Q: "is kaavya viswanathan sexy?"

A: NO. Remember, kids: plagiarism is NEVER sexy. Not even from college girls.

Thanks for reading! (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, uh, check Technorati, because, damns, this one's everywhere.)

Conversation & Comics

Fun discussion at Have Coffee Will Write about writing, blogging, and distraction. I barged into the party late and babbled on for far too long but hey whatever.

Also: I like this. I, for one, desperately want a "Your Time Is Up" panel t-shirt.

Also, and this is in no way alluded to by this post's subject line: here's part of the reason why I've got the itch to read some Philip Roth; his upcoming novel Everyman sounds fascinating (via).

Also, there's a huge dumpster outside my window. What's the landlord hinting at?

Reading material

• For you: This and this and this and this (and this and this) and this and this.


• For me: I read Tisch and then I read Gould and now I'm reading I. and after that I think I'm going to read Old Friends and then I think I'm going to stop reading Stephen Dixon for a while, and then that's when I think I'll read Intuition by Allegra Goodman, and after that I think I'm going to catch me up on some Philip Roth, either or both of Portnoy's Complaint or Our Gang, both of which were given to me for Christmas by my girlfriend, who recently asked me if it wasn't sort of sick of her that she was considering re-reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which I mostly just thought was actually pretty sexy of her.

"...we just have to be more careful from now on."

Stephen Dixon can be so very really truly without a doubt above and beyond the call of duty depressing, sometimes.

Writing about writing is like dancing about Antonio Banderas

(Yeah, it's true. Mostly I blog because I like writing subject lines.)

Scott at SlushPile.net thinks books about writing are shit. No, really: he really thinks they're shit.

There are 557 books listed in the Reference: Writing: Fiction section of Amazon. There are 3,270 books in the Reference: Publishing & Books: General section. But the sad truth is that the vast majority of writing and publishing books are shit.

Scott lays out the three categories of books about writing as he sees them. (Hint: he thinks they're all shit.) I'll admit I don't have a lot of experience with these sorts of books, but that won't stop me from calling them all shit, too (because, as my inner-bullshit detector tells me, what else can a writing book tell you but that to write, you need to write, and maybe, if you're feeling plucky, read a little?).

Well, most of them, anyway. Based on a recommendation Gwenda Bond dropped somewhere at some point in time, I recently read The Modern Library Writer's Workshop (aka "The Green Bible") by Stephen Koch. I found it quite readable. In a good way. (His tips about revision were illuminating, and practical.) I'll be re-reading it in time. Also, Scott mentions 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might, which I read last year. (One good "writing about writing" book a year seems about the right pace.)

Scott ends his post with a call for books of practical advice for practical writers. Maybe you know of some books like that; you should go suggest them. Me, I'm going to mention that Koch's book has a "further reading" list at the end that I'll be reading through over time. But for me, I'm more an occasional sucker for a good piece of Writer Porn--those books that give the warm-fuzzy reminder that yes, it's okay to act like a writer, and to think writing is super nifty, because acting like a writer is fun, and writing really is super nifty.

And now I'm going to shut up and go back to talking about Stephen Dixon because you don't need to hear an unpublished putzfuck babbling about the art and the craft of writing. Man, Stephen Dixon is totally awesome! Did I mention I finished Tisch? I'm reading Gould, now. I meant to read something else by someone else, but, I couldn't. I'm glued. Maybe I've placed orders for a bunch more of his books, because I'm sort of suddenly re-obsessed. Remember when I said this was going to be the year I read lots of super long novels like Bleak House and Don Quixote? What I meant to say was this was going to be the year I made mad love to the literature of Stephen Dixon and Kazuo Ishiguro. Mad love, people. Mad, mad love.

My god I must be stopped.

Comedy, for sufficiently low values of funny

Ha ha:

We're writing to confirm your purchase of the following Amazon Marketplace item:

1 of 30: Pieces of a Novel [Hardcover] by Dixon, Stephen

Gosh! I hope they send me the other 29 pieces too!

*rimshot*

*echo*

*...*

Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, WIKIWIKIWIKI!, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom

I've started reading Stephen Dixon's Tisch, which was the first novel he ever wrote (I think sometime in the 70s), but which was only published in 2000 by Red Hen Press. It's immediately apparent that the Stephen Dixon Voice was never something he had to struggle to find, but rather that it was sort of uncovered, or born whole, the moment he started writing. Sure, there's been shifts through his career, I'm sure; longer paragraphs or shorter, sentence length variations, some high-falutin' formal trickery, stuff like that. But the core of it--and one of these days I'm going to get down to the nasty technical work of trying to determine what exactly it is he does so I can try to explain what it is he does and why it works so surprisingly well for those of us it works for--has been there all along. (It seems. I'm not an expert.)

Anyway I started reading Tisch just so I'd have the cheap excuse to mention that I've now got friend Chris reading Stephen Dixon's amazing novel Interstate--friend Chris, I believe, is liking it; we're suckers here in Cleveland for depressing things--and to suggest again that you go read Interstate yourself, as well, because it is, and maybe I've mentioned this before, an amazing novel.

More on J-Franz's memoirage

I recently mentioned--which gave Arethusa some space for venting, an activity I whole-heartedly endorse taking up in my comments sections--that Jonathan Franzen will be publishing a memoir. Maud Newton links to an article with more information--basically a recap of a reading by Franzen of material from the forthcoming memoir.

"I am so embarrassed to be publishing a memoir," Franzen said at the event.... "It is something I more or less vowed never to do."

Franzen isn't the only one who is embarassed. Though truth is I've got nothing against memoirs as a form. Me and memoirs, we once had a little fling. (We avoided making babies, though, which is for the best.) There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the form--as with all things, there's those that are done well and those that are done poorly. At heart, memoirs and novels are both about telling stories. Personal stories are totally awesome. Personally I think I'd take a flatbed truck of memoirs over a boatload of thinly-veiled semi-autobiographical novels anyday, and not just because I think I might get seasick. But it seems like it's become such a bandwagon form these days.

So yeah, I dunno. What I do know though is that if you read somewhere about "bloggers" getting "all in a tizzy" about Franzen's move to memoir--they're talking about me, this time.

Wait, there's a world outside books? Dude, WTF?

Here's some entirely too non-literary stuff for you. Fun!

• Mel achieves something I'd have sworn was impossible: a highly styled, quite attractive MySpace page. Like what you see? Check out Mel's web development business, The Project Geek--"lower cost solutions for those in the middle". She does good work.


• Elizabeth Crane (who, ok, is literary, you got me) offers the best movie synopsis ever. Jane Dark offers the finest movie review I've ever read.


• External Monologue. Boogie Nights. Read those two Jen posts back to back and you'll be imagining the cowboy talking to himself when you're done.


• No, seriously: Dude, WTF? is That Chick's take on the Cleveland Indians. Damn fine sports blogging. I was at the game tonight; back to back homeruns and incredible weather? Spring, indeed, is here. I look forward to reading TC's take on the game.


• And finally, Pretentious Video Games! Numbers two and three on the last page are my favorites.

Chapter 39, In Which Our Hero Grows Too Excited Too Quickly

Jonathan Franzen is publishing a new novel! Jonathan Franzen is publishing a new novel! Jonathan Franzen is publishing a new novel! Jonathan Franzen is publishing a new novel! Jonathan Franzen is publishing a new novel! Jonathan Franzen is publishing a new novel! Jonathan Franzen is publishing a new novel! Jonathan Franzen is publishing a new...oh, crap, it's not a novel. It's actually a memoir.

Which, okay, whatever. I mean, sure, new J-Franz is new J-Franz, and is cause for some joy. (There are those who know me as "The guy who likes Jonathan Franzen a lot", you see.) But yeah, it's not the J-Franz we the people want. I'm going to side with Edward Champion on this one: J-Franz and DFW need to strap on sets and get to work. On novels.

Novels, man. Novels.

Mind you, this is to say nothing against DFW's short stories and essays, nor Franzen's essay collection. There was fine material across these collections, quite enjoyable, good times were had while I read them. But I really do prefer the work they've done on larger canvases. And I'd love to see more of it. Before I forget how to read, I mean.

And hey, while you're at Mr. Champion's blog, check out our good friend Brown Trout's appearance in the comments. (By "good friend" I mean "he once commented here".) Then click through to his blog for more choice bits:

There's no story in her work yet, but good fiction always starts with images. The procession is like this: Image > Story > Character > Prose > Plot, with Story ultimately being most important. For more commercial work, it seems to go Plot > Character > Prose, leaving off Image and Story altogether in many cases. I've no problem with commercial or genre work, though I can't teach it and know absolutely nothing about it. It's as alien to me as screenplays and writing for television.

I like that, though I'm not sure how much I agree with the order. (By which I mean, I don't disagree, I just don't know yet.) Also, it's nice to see someone smart enough to know they're not smart enough about commercial work.

Also:

I told her that it [writer's block] doesn't exist. I said that what exists is an unwillingness to compromise. People don't get blocked, they just choose not to write garbage. You can always write garbage. Writing garbage takes discipline, though. If you write enough of it eventually you crawl out of the hole you're in.

Which, well, just...yeah.

Blue Panda

Blue Panda
Originally uploaded by thegrue76.

In lieu of real content: an origami panda in blue.

But you're okay in my book

Dale Peck thinks you are a bad, bad person.

Two Norsemen walk into a bar. The third was fated not to. Then he died

Hey, did I mention that I'm reading more William T. Vollmann? Yeah. I am. Just when I thought I was done with him for a while, too.

At about 350 pages (with 70-ish pages of notes), compared to the 800-page Europe Central, and--for that matter--most other Vollmann books, The Ice-Shirt is bite-sized. A chewy-chunky speculative-historical snack. It's tasty enough, while being far less (for me) emotionally engaging. Which is okay right now. Perfectly fine. Oddly, that's part of why I'm enjoying it as much as I am. He's not so interested here in psychological realism, or getting inside characters' heads. There's not too much digging into the motivations people have for their actions. (Which is not something I'm much feeling up to the task of dealing with, myself, right now.) It seems like Vollmann is more interested in just what happens. What cursory glances there are toward why things happen sort of amount to answering the question "Why does stuff happen?" with the answer "Because." There might be more to it than that--hell, probably is--but that's been my take-away, so far.

Actually it's funny, Vollmann sort of reminds me of Neal Stephenson here. (I'm thinking Cryptonomicon, maybe the religious/historical lecture-ish portions of Snow Crash, and probably, from what I know of it, all of the recent trilogy.) It's not a stylistic or topic-matter comparison. It's more like, I can see the two writers as having similar aims for their fiction. For the reader, approaching these particular books, it's sort of like you have this really psychotic-smart friend, and when your friend gets really crazy-mad interested in stuff, whatever stuff, you get to watch them plow through the stuff they're interested in, and their enthusiasm for their subject gets communicated through their writing, and you can suddenly see how this stuff, that might not normally seem intriguing, really actually sort of is. It's pretty neat.

So I've got about a hundred pages to go. I'm sort of intrigued by Vollmann's writing technique (sort of a "genius-functional" thing). I don't know how much prior writing has been done on the topic. I'll share some thoughts on the subject at a later date.

And the text of the article is pretty interesting, too!

Hey hey! Check out the photo in this article! Orhan Pamuk is totally doing his Stephen Colbert impersonation!

Three times in one day? What can I say: I'm a young, virile blogger; now take off your links, baby

A.S. Byatt: I loves me some A.S. Byatt. And by "some" A.S. Byatt, I mean, "one novel by" A.S. Byatt, namely, Possession, which is, absurdly, the only book of hers that I've read. As I admitted in a comment over at Stalkers Not Allowed, it was a tough book to read in public, what with the words "A Romance" slapped there on the cover. And my Burne-Jones cover image, well, let's just say it didn't exactly scream "I'm a young, virile male who likes to get women naked so as to facilitate sweaty sexual intercourse, possibly after consuming massive quantities of beer". None of which facts prevented me from enjoying the book while remaining somewhat comfortable in my liberal pansy masculinity. My comfort being supported, no doubt, by at least one female friend of mine's admittal that she, too, found the book a little tough to display without feeling a need to explain to everyone in sight that it's not actually a romance, like a romance novel, see. So.

Okay. Anyway. So A.S. Byatt was in town recently to do a reading and a talk and I missed her because I didn't know she was here because I am a huge drooling moron who isn't fit to tie the shoes of even the lowliest litbloggers. (I really did swear at my screen, when I found out. There may have even been a little gnashing of teeth. Let it be said that I am taking measures to ensure that such connections shall not be left missed again.) That said, someone recently linked to a Michael Silverblatt interview with Byatt that I've been meaning to download and add to my ever-growing virtual stack of yet-unreviewed iPod author audio. Looks like there's 90 minutes worth of literary goodness there, and, well, it's Michael Silverblatt, who, let's face it, the guy is doing the Lord's work. Which doesn't explain why Byatt is doing the black magicks on him in this photo. Huh. Weird. I guess this means your drinking game for the duration of the audio will involve doing a shot every time Silverblatt whines, and shotgunning a beer every time Byatt tells him to let the hate flow through him.

(A thousand fake dollars to the first person to photoshop that picture into what I'm thinking of. Bonus fake points for animation. Ready...go!)

But sadly, though I'm certain it's for the best, no random swordfighting

I couldn't make it to Mac's Backs last week. Austin Kleon did, though, and he's posted a good (certainly better than anything I'd have offered) write-up about the Maureen McHugh/Ellen Klages Tiptree Award Anthology reading, complete with sketches. Maureen also posts about the reading, complete with thoughts on the hipness of the independent bookstore, and a cookie recipe that, if you're like me, will have you looking for a friend who isn't a complete kitchen failure to try to convince them they need to do some baking.

Maybe just a nibble, maybe just a squeeze: on breasts, blood, babies, and Never Let Me Go (though not in that order)

The Morning News is currently holding the second annual Tournament of Books. The brackets have hit round two, and I am forced, though belatedly, to agree with Edward Champion: the Tournament jumped the shark today, when Mark Sarvas chose a book that I haven't read over Never Let Me Go.

I think it's safe to assert that current and regular readers of my little blog will not be surprised when I say that, when I learned of Mark's decision, it may have crossed my mind, however briefly, to suggest, perhaps to even merely imply, in an entirely joking fashion (though with a certain cunning undertone of vaguely contained anger/angst, itself masking its own Midwestern "Aw, shucks, t'warn't nothin' but fun meant by it!" beating heart) that this decision proves one thing: Mark Sarvas eats babies because he hates America. And babies. Except when served, medium-rare, on a plate, with a baked potato. And steak sauce.

Here, if you're interested, is Mark's judgment. But if you haven't read Never Let Me Go yet, and if you somehow, blessedly, still know little to nothing of the story, then you should read the book before clicking that link. (And what are you waiting for, anyway? Must I bleed my recommendations? Don't tell me you haven't even considered reading Steve Erickson's Our Ecstatic Days yet. You haven't, have you? Fine: hand me my blade.) But suffice it to say that when Mark "Fancypants Babyeater" Sarvas says things like

Never Let Me Go is a virtuoso display of icy control but is finally as flat as the voice that narrates it.

and

But what was heartbreaking there [in The Remains of the Day] is merely grating here.

and

Ishiguro has a clear purpose in mind that he executes faultlessly, so in the end it's a book one can admire--but is unlikely to love.

that I feel I must set aside my humorous smack-talk (because, I ask you, what good are tournament-style brackets without liberal heaping helpings of smack-talk?) in favor of a serious and heartfelt call of capital-b Bullshit. Just a few days ago, I finished reading Never Let Me Go for the second time; my pre-existent emotional and spiritual state during this reading could not have been much more different than that of my first time through the book. That first time I read the book, it scared me and broke my heart. This second time I read it, the book offered me, wait for it, comfort--of all things, comfort, from a piece of modern art!--in a time of sadness. That one book was able to do both things only increased my regard for this warm--far from icy!--bundle of words; refutation of Mark's suggestion that a person would be "unlikely to love" Never Let Me Go is left as an exercise for the reader.

All that said, there's at least one point I can agree with, though it comes from John Warner's post-match analysis (which, itself, should also be avoided, until you've read the book). It's true: Scarlett Johansson has very, very nice breasts.

(holding pattern)

Ha! I'm NOT alone!

Since about 80% of this article went unread after I downloaded it, I'll point you to the 20% that made me feel better about myself. Really I think half my gripe with podcasts is the word "podcast" itself. Don't fall for the hipstercast bloggercast buzzcast hype, kids! Remember! Not once has television ever a) given you a broad or b) been casted at you by a broad. (And if "b" ever has held true, it was probably a nasty fight, and I'm sorry for bringing up bad memories.)

That said, Edward Champion recently interviewed William T. Vollmann. Kazuo Ishiguro recently appeared on the Guardian Book Club. And David Foster Wallace was recently aurally-spotted on Bookworm. It's a veritable cornucopia of audio of my current Important White Male Writer Obsessions. (I figure Ishiguro is British enough to count, eh?) If someone coughs up a J-Franz interview in which he says he's on my way to my apartment right now to hand me the manuscript of his next book--to discuss a few points with me--I'd probably love you the only way a man can love someone through the Internet without using his credit card. (Links! I mean links to your blog! Sicko.)

Also speaking of Ishiguro there's a couple of other bits of audio I've been digging up recently that I need to figure out how to save for posterity. And by posterity I mean, that day when I'm going to stop jamming to tunes and get down to listening to very important literary audio things.

Speaking of tunes, I still owe Maureen a list of songs that have held my attention recently. It's so amazingly hard to do that, to pick some arbitrarily finite number of songs, especially if I'm going to say something brilliant about them, something that will make you as a reader instantly go give bands money so they'll keep making music for me. (That said I'd like it if someone would give Autolux a billion dollars so they could play in my living room. That would be sweet. Same deal for A Cricket in Times Square. Buy me a second living room. Or just a bigger living room. Also, Laetitia Sadier. I mean, she should be in my living room. I've downshifted back to normal Stereolab listening rates recently but my God whenever Fab Four Suture comes up in the playlist I go into immediate French-rock love spasms. Yeah.)

Also, isn't the current test-name for Maureen's blog genius? Note the impartiality I wear on my sleeve. (On a shirt I'm not actually wearing, but.) Sadly, due to unforeseen (saddening) circumstances, I won't be able to make the reading at Mac's Backs on Thursday (which means no sword-fighting with Austin, so he'll hopefully keep his hands and recap it for Team Blogland). You should go though anyways because I'm certain it will be awesome.

To close out with a couple random things before I disappear for maybe a week (or more) (because sometimes, life calls in the bills): While I intend to read Don Quixote this year, and while the idea of combining the reading with a deathmarch tickles my fancy, the timing on the Don Quixote Deathmarch is sadly not right for me, so I'm going to have to wait a while and go it alone, though I do salute those who partake in this endeavor; Jane Dark has an interesting take on V for Vendetta (which yours truly did like and was sort of surprised by the "subversiveness" of it, but was more surprised by how sad it made me that something as weakly "subversive" as this movie was was somehow surprising); Yay!!!--I mean come on, I'm way more likely to go buy two paperbacks than one hardcover anyday, nevermind whether I might wind up spending more total; and finally, did I say hells yeah to this judgment yet? If not: Hells yeah! No no, I mean it. Hells yeah.

With a name like Darby, I'd have to be cute

Cute like a dog, that is. (Via MetaxuCafe.)

(In any case that photo does sort of symbolically represent how I feel about my own writing lately. It's like, wow, hey, this is nice. I'm actually making writing again. Tangible enough for me to rest my chin on it. But there's not really enough to make a full-blown pillow out of it though, so.)

(Placeholder posts like this to continue until I get some free time. To make real posts. Right.)

(Also by the way, I know you want me to be your friend, right?)

(While I'm at it: yes, the bulk of this entire post is its own asides.)

Old lit bloggers don't die, they just...well, yeah they do, eventually, but they live on in our minds thanks to the paganesque notion of immortality

I'm...I'm not quite dead yet!

I am, maybe, though, a little bit obsessed.

(I recently read When We Were Orphans. Loved it. Missed half of what I should have caught, though. Dur. I'm about to start re-reading Never Let Me Go. Then, I think it's time, the time has come: time to re-tackle The Unconsoled. Oy!)

--

Also, quick shout-outs to those who have left some recent comments:

Denny: Leave all-year warmth? What the HUH? Crazy talk.

L Lee Lowe: I have not read Michel Faber. But, I will! Thanks for the suggestion!

Arethusa: Oo! Yeah, I'd been wondering recently if Ishiguro did things other than novels. I need to check that out, definitely.

Also, some fun recent convo at Working With Words. (I secretly get nervous when I find out someone's actually listening to the things I say, and that people might actually read books I suggest. I feel like I suddenly have credibility, but before I get to figure out what to do with it, it's already on the line. Yikes!)

(Also, speaking of credibility: I recently outed myself in a comment at Jen's site. Yeah, I'm that awesome.)

Buh duh wuh HUH?

Eh? Wha?

Dear Cleveland: here's something you could steal and make way so much more better.

Three things I want you to know; the third sounds a lot weirder than it actually is

1. I'm about 180 pages into Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, and, yes, it's true: I've developed a tremendously huge crush on Ishiguro's brain. Call it a braincrush.

2. I'm on about Day Nine of being Way Over The Top Obsessed with the band Stereolab, and, yes, it's true: I've developed a tremendously huge crush on lead singer Laetitia Sadier. Call it a Frenchcrush.

3. If Ishiguro and Sadier got together and made a baby, and then sent that baby back in time, so that it was sort of like the baby was actually born in 1978, making that baby about my age? I would marry that baby, today, with all my post-ironic heart.

Two things I want you to know

1. I don't care what certain lesser reviews have to say--I mean seriously, Rolling Stone referring to anybody as "coasting"? Get out. When's the last time they've been relevant? And no, Almost Famous doesn't count--because the truth is this: the new Stereolab CD, Fab Four Suture, is great. Mad great. Mad crazy great, no doubt.

2. I promise blog posts longer than a couple sentences sometime in the next month. I got plans. There's gonna be this faucet, see. And when I turn it, it's gonna flow. Flow with water, and lots of it. With the water being a metaphorical representation of the cool, refreshing, thirst-quenching taste of my ideas and words. The faucet won't be a metaphor, though. It'll just be a faucet. I'm really don't know how it's going to work, but I'm pretty sure it won't involved awful mixed metaphor jokes.

A blogpost only Noah Cicero and Tao Lin could love

Why does Fearless Leader want to make the Baby Jesus cry?

Speaking of David Foster Wallace, David Foster Wallace is Speaking

In conjunction with my previously having linked to an audio interview with author Mary Gaitskill, I mentioned my general state of being not-so-into podcasts. I did eventually listen to the Bookworm interview with Gaitskill. Both which and who I liked, and was made at least momentarily glad for all this technology stuff.

So imagine my surprise when several weeks passed and, after I'd completely forgotten that I'd put the podcast feed into iTunes, I noticed that the Bookworm interview that had most recently been downloaded to my computer was with...David Foster Wallace! And this after the generally accepted belief that one must ritually sacrifice real human babies to DFW's agent to get even a napkin from DFW that had once dried his sweat. Not that I've actually listened to the interview yet, since I've been too busy listening to Stereolab's entire catalog on repeat for the last week straight. It's just sort of pomoically comforting to know that I'm carrying around David Foster Wallace's voice in my pocket when I'm doing the hipster shuffle down mainstreet.

iThere's iSome text interviews out there, iToo, if iYou're iNot into the iWhole iAudio iThing.

Let's hope for less of the same, and more of the rock

Not only does Tod Goldberg root out the fucktards, he also drops the occasional dose of Intriguing Industry Insider Perspective. The moral of the story? Don't know what to expect.

One of those days

Certainly, the greatest music review ever.

An open letter to the Getting Things Done cult

Dear Getting Things Done cult,

Uh, what? Are you kidding me? People, it's called a "notebook". Look it up.

Sincerely,
Someone who thinks you've jumped the shark

TDAOC Reading Tips #1

When in doubt: read some Kazuo Ishiguro.

Uh oh--competition on the high seas of the piratic bloggery. Quick, somebody get me a poop deck

Back in November, Maureen McHugh and Dan Chaon and Kelly Link gave a reading at Mac's Backs on Coventry. But you knew that already, because you're a very loyal, terribly dedicated, hell, some might go so far as to say "freaky stalkerish" TDAOC reader. Or not. Being the sort of blogger I am, my follow-up blog post was really more of a blog sneeze.

As it turns out, I wasn't the only blogger in the room that night. Austin Kleon, whose blog I discovered randomly today, was also there. His write-up totally kicks my write-up's ass. Why? Hand-drawn pictures, that's why. Plus, Austin brings us the night's money quote: "I heard one of the audience members say, 'Oh, God, it's like the royalty of Cleveland writing here tonight...'"

So now Maureen McHugh and Ellen Klages are going to be giving a reading at Mac's on Thursday, March 30, at 7 pm; check the Mac's Backs monthly e-mail, kindly reposted by Jeff Hess at Have Coffee Will Write, for all the details. (Just be warned: Maureen McHugh is very intimidating. "How intimidating," you ask? She has actually intimidated cancer right out of her body. That's intimidating, right there.)

Until then, I've got to concern myself with figuring out how I'm going to one-up Austin's follow-up post. I gots reputation to protect, see. I'm thinking of learning to paint watercolor portraits before the reading. I'm sure I can squeeze an easel in down in the basement of Mac's Backs. Or maybe I'll just take the cop-out option and challenge Austin to a sword fight. Because nothing says fortifying one's Technorati rank like accidentally hacking your own limbs off.

Good news

No no no. Not good news.

Inanely fantastic news.

Cat Blogging Friday

I'm going to join the litblogosphere's own Gwenda Bond and participate in Cat Blogging Friday, cuz it's still Friday somewhere, yo.

Let me introduce you to Simon...



...and Stella...



...who are not my cats. That said, they think I'm okay enough that they let me hang out with them for an afternoon last Sunday as I eased my hungover way into semi-full consciousness. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to determine who's the shy one and who's the little attention whore. Hint: Stella is definitely the little attention whore. In the good way, I mean.

(If you're desperately looking for a book connection in this post, there actually is one; I read the first hundred pages of Blue Angel that afternoon.)

She....wore....blue....oops, wrong story

So last year, I read Francine Prose's A Changed Man, and I wasn't all that crazy about it. Since then, I've read some of her reviews and essays, which I've generally found interesting and stimulating. I've liked them, really. Liked them enough to think maybe my reaction to her novel--I mean, not her one novel, it was actually her fourteenth, give or take?--was just a fluke thing. So, now, I've read her previous novel Blue Angel, because I think I'd heard once or ten times or howevermuch that it was better than A Changed Man and it got stuck in my head and I felt like I needed to give it a shot. So I've given it that shot, and, I guess though I still see some of the elements of her prose style that bothered me so much in A Changed Man in this book, those moments generally bothered me less in Blue Angel. For whatever reason. (Though they still did bother me, now and then. There's a certain earnestness, now and then. Like, a blatantness to the way some things are stated. And I get nervous even saying that because I worry that's where the "satire" in her novels is, and I'm just actually totally missing it. I worry a lot about this. That I'm just not getting the joke.) And overall, I think I'd want to say that I enjoyed the novel, if it weren't for the fact that I spent most of it having strong, very strong, reactions to everything Swenson, the main character, did. Or failed to do. For very long stretches of the book, all I could think was, "My God! Swenson! You fucking asshole!" And then now and then I'd find myself downshifting to think, "Aw, jeez, Swenson. You dumbass." And though there was a bit--maybe a page or two--near the climax of the book where I sort of found myself pitying him, it really didn't last, because, jeez, Swenson...what an asshole. And there you have it, the core of my feeling about this book: Francine Prose did an awesome job of making me hate the hell out of her main character. Like, clenching-my-teeth levels of hate. I'm not sure if this is the reaction she intended for me to have.

Right click, add to bookmarks

Grant Bailie--who is not Maud Newton but who may secretly be James Spader (according to the comments within that page I just linked to there, which said link you should not click if you are not prepared to participate in a frank, honest discussion of that most basic of human needs, by which I mean not James Spader but ESS EEE EKS, wink wink) but who is verifiably the author of the very fine novel Cloud 8--has started up a little thing called a "blog" which has quite possibly the best title ever. Seriously. Oh, you question me, but see if you're not tapping your foot to it in a couple hours when you've got it stuck in your head.

Also, rumor has it--and by rumor I mean me, or rather "I", which means that "has" would actually be a "have" but whatever--that, if you drop by The Erin O'Brien's Owner Manual for Human Beings, and catch Erin with her web cam on, and you click on it, you might just be able to take part in a little something called "chatting" with Erin, possibly Grant, and maybe, if you're having a bad day, a terminally uninteresting me, on such fascinating and far-flung literary topics as cigarettes, pirates, lamps, pants, and Texas. Just sayin'.

Well, that's one way to put it

"It's like eating a whole lot and going to the vomitorium." (Via.)