Vacation
Tomorrow morning I leave on a 6 a.m. flight to Ft. Lauderdale and will be gone for a little more than a week. I’ll resume posting on January 12, if not before.
As promised, Stephany Aulenback will step in from time to time in my absence. I adore that woman, and so will you. [...]
Miscellany
From “Hey, Shakespeare, Kiss My Ass,” by Geoff Wolinetz:
You think you’re so great. “Look at me. I’m Shakespeare. Millions of high-school students read my plays and poems. I’m so cool. Every pretentious jerk with an accent yearns to play the characters in my works. I had sex with Gwyneth Paltrow. I wear this gay-looking collar [...]
Lethem audio interview
Today, from 2 to 3 p.m., you can hear Brendan Costello, one of my City College classmates, interviewing Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude) on WBAI 99.5 FM, for the weekly “Arts Magazine” show.
If you’re not in New York, you can stream the audio online.
Recognitions
Wood S Lot pays homage to William Gaddis, with links to a Dalkey Press interview, Tim Conley’s elegy, and more.
At Return of the Reluctant, Ed says: “Without Gaddis, there would not have been a Thomas Pynchon, nor a David Foster Wallace, nor a John Barth.” He links to a Gaddis video interview [...]
A fate that easily could befall Mr. Maud and me
“A man who says he sells books and magazines on the street was rescued after being trapped for two days under a mountain of reading material in his apartment.” (Via In Apprehension.)
Proper writing attire
D-Nasty, a 25-year-old investment banker and budding novelist, has taken to wearing corduroy suits while writing:
I had heard somewhere that writers need to brand themselves.
Apparently, if you brand yourself you can get away with sub par work because people buy your indentity, not your work.
This explains how Tom Wolfe seriously called a book “A [...]
Party like it’s an MLA convention
“Each December, several thousand literature professors pry themselves away from the comforts of home and flock to the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, held during the final week of the calendar year. It is a winter tradition — not as ancient as Hanukkah or Christmas, but older, at least, than Festivus.”
Best online fiction award
Jason Sanford, editor of storySouth, has announced a “new best online fiction award” called “the Million Writers Award,” and is soliciting your nominations. The purpose of the contest is “to honor and promote the best fiction published in online literary journals and magazines during 2003.”
Editors of qualifying publications may nominate three stories; readers [...]
Walrus-related
The third issue of The Walrus, the publication that promised to be the Harper’s and New Yorker of Canada, isn’t out yet, and the proprietor of Bookninja is hopping mad:
Well, here it is, the end of another month and The Walrus is AWOL, AGAIN. Are they late? Are they on a break? What is their [...]
Laura Bush backs educational incentives for would-be librarians
My archivist and librarian friends have been talking about (and anticipating) the impending librarian shortage for the last ten years. Now Laura Bush, a former librarian, is behind “a federal grant program to recruit a new generation of librarians, largely through scholarships in library and information science.”
Prescience of Brandeis
This weekend I was talking with Emma about Noam Chomsky’s argument that the U.S. government is “primarily responsive to huge corporate interests, which are internally tyrannical and secretive, and which are granted enormous power, far greater than that accorded to individuals.”
In law school I was impressed by the prescient dissent of former U.S. Supreme Court [...]
A history of literateurs manque run amok
From “Notes on the Death of Literary Terrorism,” by Sean Carman:
The avant-garde literary guerilla faction “The Underground Literary Allegiance” emerged as a group of 9 revolutionary writers who had previously styled themselves, “the Underground Literary Alliance.” Before that, they were a cabal of 15 known as “The Movement for Heightened Sensivity to Literature,” and before [...]
Any resemblance to persons living or dead
Miramax Books has purchased a satirical novel (Twins of Tribeca) about a dysfunctional studio “clearly based” on Miramax and its founders. According to Harvey Weinstein, Miramax co-founder:
Miramax books like ‘Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes’ and Miramax movies like ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ and ‘Full Frontal’ are examples of the fact that we can [...]
The year in literature: a Dave Barry perspective
In anticipation of my trip to Miami, I bring you Dave Barry’s 2003 year in review. From the entry for July:
On the literary front, the blockbuster bestseller of the year is the long-awaited fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter Reaches Puberty and Starts Taking Really Long Showers. Another hot seller is Sen. Hillary Clinton’s [...]
Words from Coetzee
The full text of “As a Woman Grows Older,” J.M. Coetzee’s recent lecture in New York City, is available in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books. (Via The Elegant Variation.)
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