Introducing Sean Carman
Sean Carman has written humor for the likes of Comedy Central, McSweeney’s (including the forthcoming Best of Humor anthology), and The Big Jewel.
Here’s an excerpt of his “From the Found Notebooks of the Members of Homer’s Writing Group“:
Re: “The Odyssey”
H: Another solid story from the group’s most prolific member! And we’d barely [...]
Art of revision
Joyce Carol Oates recently rewrote one of her older novels when the publisher asked her to check it for errors before a reissue. More interesting to me (since I’m not really a devotee of Ms. Oates) is the discussion in this article of other writers who evinced a propensity to rewrite. Thomas Hardy, [...]
Are you dating a Godly guy?
“In focus groups, online polling, and one-on-one discussion, Extreme for Jesus has found that the number one reason teens don’t read the Bible is that it is ‘too big and freaky looking.’ This fashion-magazine format for the New Testament is the perfect solution to that problem.” (Via TMFTML.)
For a larger photo of the cover, [...]
Bias charges against the BBC
After 81 years of independence, the BBC is being accused by Conrad Black, publisher of Britain’s conservative Daily and Sunday Telegraph, of “becom[ing] the greatest menace facing the country it was founded to serve and inform.” (Via TMFTML.)
Preservation
More and more periodicals are published electronically. The problem of preserving this digital data is discussed in the current issue of The Economist. Open call to all of my archivist friends and readers: feel free to send in your perspective. (Via Arts Journal.)
A former British mining town sought to rejuvenate its failing [...]
Generate
About Last Night reminds us to stop by the Internet Anagram Server from time to time.
Read some antagonistic error messages: “You can’t access /index.shtml on this server because your pure ugliness has crashed the internet.” (Via The Black Table.)
Dee Dee Peel, water sales expert, offers a Friendster-style testimonial for So New Media founder, Ben [...]
Emerson’s 200th, more
I prefer Christopher Benfey’s review of two new books about Ralph Waldo Emerson to Updike’s reaction to the same volumes. I haven’t read the books themselves, however, and am unlikely to do so.
Helen Brown, for the Telegraph, observes that the lovers of famous writers have the ability to “trade on the fame that dwarfs [...]
Most phallic building contest
Jonathan Ames wants you to help him and Cabinet Magazine identify the most phallic building in the world:
I recently wrote a piece for Slate.com in which I claimed that the Williamsburgh Bank Building was the most phallic in the world and a number of people wrote to me, protesting this and offering links to other [...]
“Operation Shiksa: A Philip Roth Mystery He Didn’t Write”
David Handelman purchased a used copy of Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock: A Confession. He was enjoying it until page 55, when he found some markings:
I leafed ahead and discovered to my horror that a previous owner had underlined, annotated, asterisked, circled and exclamation-pointed with abandon….
The careful handwriting looked feminine; the fact that every Yiddish [...]
Don’t, and do
Publisher’s Lunch takes note of a Wall Street Journal article (available only by subscription) about writers who don’t write blurbs for book jacket covers. Jan Karon, Ricky Moody and Jonathan Lethem evidently are among the unwilling.
The current issue of the New York Press reveals that the members of Romance Writers of America are “shockingly nice [...]
Just a drop
The New York Press recalls the life of poet Maxwell Bodenheim, who was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and whose work was at one time compared with that of Ezra Pound and Edgar Lee Masters:
By the early 50s, the “tall, cadaverous, unwashed” Bodenheim spent much of his time drinking straight grain alcohol. Hecht wrote that, after [...]
“The little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine”
“Bourbon,” From Signposts in a Strange Land, by Walker Percy, 1975:
I can hardly tell one Bourbon from another, unless the other is very bad. Some bad Boubons are even more memorable than good ones. For example, I can recall being broke with some friends in Tennessee and deciding to have a party and being able [...]
Moment of choosing
Sara Nelson considers the many reasons an author might choose to use a pseudonym. “Publishing’s job, these days, is to create buzz, and a pseudonym is one way to interest people like me in writing stories like this,” she says. (Via TMFTML, A/K/A Joel Stein.)
I mentioned another interesting article on pseudonyms last month: [...]
“No movie could be more aptly compared to raw sewage”
Critical Mess: if film posters told the truth. (Via Things Magazine.)
And here’s an unspeakable photograph from the Oregon County Fair.
Bush press conference
Yesterday the Washington Post called for a Bush to do a solo press conference. As I type, he’s doing it. I’m so excited–not because I think homeboy will say anything truthful, but because he is bound to provide the likes of Mr. John Warner with new material.
I can’t stream audio at work. [...]