May I take an interlude from my cranky self? Wow, I love my friend Elizabeth’s blog Fancy Notions.
What’s it about? I don’t know. Old men on bikes who might be ghosts, small plastic doodads, lost pet notices, bacon-decorated Converse hightops, puppets — actually, I’m not sure if she’s talked about puppets yet, but I imagine she’ll get to them eventually. She’s currently giving away a vintage paper napkin collection.
That was also a break from my bookish self. But not. Because Elizabeth writes like the dickens. Not the Charles Dickens. Some other dickens.
Over at Jacket Copy, Gustavo Arellano — the columnist behind ¡Ask a Mexican! — pulls double shift to answer some questions from me.
Barbara Bauer, a literary agent, has sued 19 defendants in New Jersey over unflattering remarks made about her on the internet. She is upset about being included in a list of the 20 Worst Literary Agents that started here and got picked up multiple places. She’s suing Wikipedia. She’s suing AbsoluteWrite. She’s suing YouTube.
I know nothing about Ms. Bauer’s skills as a literary agent. But as a person existing in today’s multimedia world, I’d say she’s clearly a fucktard.
Ed Park’s novel Personal Days is set in a company drastically downsizing. This flickr set of the empty spaces left behind as the San Jose Mercury News downsizes perfectly illustrates what I pictured as the novel’s workspaces. I guess it made the rounds earlier this year, but it’s back in the news — the longtime designer who took the photos was just told he’s been laid off, too.
Last night Ed Park read from his novel Personal Days at Book Soup in West Hollywood. West Hollywood is a teeny part of Los Angeles, teeny, that is, as long as you’re not running across it in heels and officewear on the hottest day of the year. That’s the way to make West Hollywood feel laaaarrrrge.
Personal Days is in three parts, and Ed, not to spoil anything for the audience members who hadn’t yet read it, stuck to the beginning. His understated, conversational reading style really brought out the book’s humor, and the audience was tickled. At one point Park remarked that a certain line hadn’t gotten a laugh yet on the book tour. But it was funny. We laughed.
In other news: in reading a months-old New Yorker, I discovered T Cooper. I’m late to the table on this, but damn, that’s some great writing. Right here.
And moving ahead in time, I finished The Urban Hermit, a memoir by Sam MacDonald that won’t be on shelves until December. Sam was the only one of my Pitt classmates who had a book deal while in grad school, I think. He was certainly the only one writing a book while teaching, taking classes and raising twins. And if you think that sounds a little crazy, you should read about his stint urban hermiting. Come December, that is.
There’s a new NEA report on artists and work. Yesterday the NY Times reported that “Among artists under 35, writers are the only group in which 80 percent or more are non-Hispanic white.”
Tayari Jones asks:
why it is that all other areas of art are becoming more diverse, but not writing? I would think that writing would really lend itself to inclusion since the start up costs are so low. A question worth thinking about is whether this means times are good or hard for writers of color. On the one hand being so darn rare makes us attractive, or at least it does, theoretically. But on the other hand, the scarcity suggests steep challenges.
Indeed. Sounds like it’s time to visit 826LA.
USC has pulled the plug on the excellent Online Journalism Review (via). Nice going, alma mater. (bad)
Cecil Castellucci wins the 2007 Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Writer, a Very Big Deal for comics in Canada. (good!)
Master monster maker Stan Winston has died. (bad)
On Jacket Copy, David Ulin and Richard Rayner are talking about Denis Johnson’s new serialized noir — me too! (good!) — come on, jump in.
Oh, I almost forgot: Michael Dirda has no truck with cute young creative literary critics.
I continue to write about my cross-country drive on Jacket Copy. But it is possible that I have in fact reached my destination. Which does not yet have regular internet access.
It is possible that I am in a cafe that has a flatscreen tuned in The View, not a show of choice for me.
It is possible that in the last day I skimmed/read Truth in Nonfiction, which was a little too academic and navel-gazing for my tastes (far too many essays began with “in my memoir”); yet still, Mark Doty, John D’Agata and David Shields impressed. There is more rich material to be mined in this vein, I think.
It is possible that if you are driving to Trader Joe’s, I’d love to tag along.
But reference books are, when Gwenda writes about them for PW.
So are Houston stoners, who decided a skull-shaped bong wasn’t authentic enough.
What exactly happened the night of August 19, 1994? Tell the best story, win an ARC of John Scalzi’s Zoe’s Tale.
Jami Attenberg provides a virtual soundtrack for her novel The Kept Man at Largehearted Boy.
Today author Steve Gillis is blogging at The Syntax of Things.
I became belatedly aware of the kerfluffle over the Virginia Quarterly Review’s (over?)sharing of their readers’ comments on their slush pile — wish I’d seen them, and sorry that people were so huffy over getting a truthful peek behind the scenes at a litmag. Anyway, part of the fallout is this thoughtful post about the magazine’s (perceived) sensibility, which I find interesting, especially with the long comment thread. The complaint — which I’m not doing justice to by excerpting it — says, in part:
something that applies to these stories, and also to lots of other fiction published these days, and which accounts for this reader’s frequent lack of enthusiasm for fiction found in so many lit mags….: a lack of attention to character and a focus instead on culture and outside events
The call for attention to character is one that I think can be overemphasized in MFA programs, a plea for a naturalism and realism that I think is only “natural” or “real” in 20th century fiction. I’ll go think about it some more while I start putting books in boxes.
Yesterday I sold my Honda. It was a great little grad school car: didn’t break down with any costly repairs, could park anywhere, drove me all around the country last summer. But as much as I appreciated it, I never became too attached; it was my sister’s first, and I only had it for two years.
Which might be why I am now going carless.
I can ride a bike. Lexington, Kentucky, like Paris, has a low-cost bike rental program for the center of the city. Writer Christopher Rowe is its wrangler — today he’s in the Lexington Herald-Leader. I have my own bike (like this), which I’ve made sort of roadworthy. But the brakes are wobbly. We’ll see.
Luckily in LA, I can take the Metrorail. I love subways — I can read on them. Read! I can’t read on a bus or in a car, but subways and trains, I’m good. I read Cloud Atlas on a train from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC. A big chunk of Underworld while stuck on a stalled train in Connecticut. So many New Yorkers while commuting from Williamsburg to Midtown in NYC. I read Naked on the NY subway and got a little too much attention. And now I’ll get to bust out stuff to read on the LA Metro; better go to Pasadena once in a while just to have a long enough ride to really make some progress.
I was planning to sign up with Zipcar to augment my new Metro/reading habit — but when they bought rival Flexcar, they shut down all but two Los Angeles locations (inconveniently at USC and UCLA). In Pittsburgh, a city of less than 350,000, there are 34 Zipcars. Here I thought carsharing was supposed to be an alternative transportation source for environmentally-inclined urbanites; no, it’s just car rental for college students. Whatevs.
Then there’s my skateboard. Am I too old to ride a skateboard? When I fall down and go boom, will I break something? Will it please stop raining so I can bust it out and not freeze up the trucks?
clicking is more interesting than packing
But reference books are, when Gwenda writes about them for PW.
So are Houston stoners, who decided a skull-shaped bong wasn’t authentic enough.
What exactly happened the night of August 19, 1994? Tell the best story, win an ARC of John Scalzi’s Zoe’s Tale.
Jami Attenberg provides a virtual soundtrack for her novel The Kept Man at Largehearted Boy.
Today author Steve Gillis is blogging at The Syntax of Things.
I became belatedly aware of the kerfluffle over the Virginia Quarterly Review’s (over?)sharing of their readers’ comments on their slush pile — wish I’d seen them, and sorry that people were so huffy over getting a truthful peek behind the scenes at a litmag. Anyway, part of the fallout is this thoughtful post about the magazine’s (perceived) sensibility, which I find interesting, especially with the long comment thread. The complaint — which I’m not doing justice to by excerpting it — says, in part:
The call for attention to character is one that I think can be overemphasized in MFA programs, a plea for a naturalism and realism that I think is only “natural” or “real” in 20th century fiction. I’ll go think about it some more while I start putting books in boxes.