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The Reading Experience has an excellent posting on William Gaddis, another author who I've sort of circled around. It's worth the price of admission just for the link to the Gaddis Annotations page. And, as Maud and Ron report, there's a new blog by Jonathan Ames devoted to "questions about literary mysteries and scandals".
There's good stuff out there, people.
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Dong Resin has the last word on the whole Gibson thingy.
"I dunno man, he manages to rip free of three of the nails before the Romans finally have to shoot him. Mel really macho'd the fuck out of this thing. Also he fights a shark near the middle. I dunno, with eyebeams. JesusBeams, whatever, it's badass. No, you don't see beams, the shark just burns up. Then he decapitates one of the Bad Jews with his halo. No, I'm not kidding, the thing is nutty. I know. Well, somehow it works. It's not like I'm making it sound. I don't know, people don't want to badmouth it, I guess. I really didn't expect the bukkake scene in a mainstream movie like this. Well, it's off-screen but implied, you see it all over his face. I know. I can't believe the Pope was cool with that."
-This thing I say loudly into my cell phone just outside the Jesus Movie.
Although we can't help but wonder if Gibson's target audience knows what bukkake is ...
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We're still not feeling quite ourselves, so the posts will be few and terse today. Can't vouch for quality either.
First up, there's an audio interview with Isabel Allende (requires RealPlayer). We've got mixed feelings about her - kinda like the Rolling Stones, we like the early stuff but aren't as impressed with recent efforts. Still, Eva Luna occupies a respected place on our shelves, hence this link.
Oh, and until further notice, all our links are courtesy of Lizzie. Except when they're not.
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The Independent has what appears to be an interesting article on the pitfalls of e-books but we're still too sick to read it carefully enough to know for sure. Check it out for us and let us know, ok?
What King discovered, though, was that people on the net love a free ride, but tend to get off when the hat comes round. By the fourth chapter, the figure had fallen below the magic 75 per cent; the fifth was the last to be offered, and payments had hit 48 per cent of downloads. This might seem more like a test of herd mentality (which showed that the internet "herd" likes freebies). But it also illustrates how tightly bound people are to the expectation that on the net, somebody else will pick up the tab, because that's how it seems to work.
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... because yesterday it was the Guardian and today it's the Telegraph.
Among the many clichés that are used to temper praise of the first works of young, or youngish novelists, there is one that, being more or less ungainsayable, is generally a safe bet: "He's still finding his voice." So what on earth are we to make of David Mitchell? Ever since his first novel, the suggestively titled Ghostwritten, Mitchell has been on a polyphonic spree that takes in Japanese jazz-buffs; disembodied transmigratory consciousnesses; suicidal investment bankers; Irish particle physicists; 19th-century American adventurers; tweedy, fraudulent vanity publishers; and the bio-engineered fast-food slaves of the future.
We, too, have a copy of Ghostwritten on one of our three "to read" bookcases - looks like it's time to pull it down at last.
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Judy Blume is being honored by Poets & Writers for "literary courage".
Some parents and religious groups objected, calling Blume's books inappropriate for young minds. They demanded that schools and libraries remove Blume's novels or restrict their use. Some did.That is how the author came to join the board of the National Coalition Against Censorship. And that is one of the reasons Blume is one of three authors being honored Tuesday by the literary group Poets & Writers for "giving generously to other writers or to the broader literary community."
"If you asked me about book-banning when I began to write, I'd have told you, 'This is America. We celebrate knowledge and ideas; we're not afraid of them,' " Blume says. "But sometimes circumstances force us into roles we never dreamed we would play, and those roles often become the most important in our lives."
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Who even knew Wisconsin had a poet laureate? (Oh shit, here comes the Cheesehead hate mail ... )
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Dr. Seuss is turning one hundred and there be some celebratin' planned.
Audrey Geisel is presiding over a year's worth of ceremonies celebrating "Seussentenial: A Century of Imagination."The events include the debut of a Postal Service stamp; a tour of theatrical performances and children's workshops across 40 cities; a series of Dr. Seuss celebrity book reviews; exhibits of items from the Dr. Seuss archives and of Ted Geisel's art; the unveiling of a Dr. Seuss sculpture at the Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego; and the presentation of a star honoring the author on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.
Seussentenial ... see if you can say it fast ten times.
UPDATE: Maud links to an ... um ... interesting (and timely) take on Seuss. In other news, this whole linking controversy appears to have gotten to her.
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We're a little under the weather today (though not as bad as Ed), so we'll be keeping it brief.
First up, Singapore has honored Joseph Conrad.
Singapore honoured "Heart of Darkness'' author Joseph Conrad on Tuesday with a plaque in this bustling Southeast Asian seaport, which the late Polish-born writer often visited while working on merchant ships in the 1880s.
We're acutely aware of the criticisms levied against Conrad; he's one of those nettlesome types, like Wagner. Where does he belong? What do we do with him? Well, until anyone comes up with a better suggestion, we'll settle for reading him.
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Amid the recent blog war posts, Naomi Wolf and the rest, I don't think I've seen any blog coverage yet on this absolutely idiotic statement made by our so-called Education Secretary. (Kafka's laughing somewhere.)
So Education Secretary Rod Paige says the nation's leading teacher's union is a "terrorist organization."Ha. Ha. Just kidding guys.
The assembled governors stared and sputtered. So later Paige apologized but added that the National Education Association is kinda like a bunch of semi-pseudo terrorist group because it's obstructing President Bush's "No Child Left Behind," an under-funded federal takeover of local schools that relies on standardized tests to label half of schools as failing.
These guys are so reactionary, so far to the right, so far out of anything resembling the mainstream of American values that we're just sputtering with rage. Every time Nader tries to tell you there's no difference between the parties, see if you can imagine Clinton's Education Secretary Richard Riley saying anything so moronic.
If you don't live in a swing state (Bush will win California around the same time that his National Guard service is proved), send money to Kerry. He's hardly our dream date but come on, guys. If you do live in a swing state, organize and get out the vote. This country is moving into a Dark Ages; these guys stole the White House and it's time to get it back.
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In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.
