Drew Toal—
Has there ever been a good book about skateboarding? I was just watching Thrashin’ for the millionth time the other day, and thought, “Man, this story of Corey Webster and his one-man skate crusade against nemesis Hook (and his band of loyal Daggers) as they battle first at the joust and then at the big downhill,” would make for a riveting read. I had hopes for that When Skateboards Will Be Free book, but it turns out that it wasn’t really about siiiick Acid Drops at all. Disappointing.
25
Another dead person whose work I miss
Just let me sleep, woman!
So I’m making my way through this forthcoming Raymond Carver biography, and really enjoying reading it alongside Where I’m Calling From, the stories in which, I think, are arranged chronologically. It’s interesting to see how Carver’s ideas and fears manifest themselves on the page. I hadn’t read Carver for a few years, so most of the stories seem pretty fresh. Also, I’m really amused by his dialogue, which could’ve been taken from my own life. For instance, in “The Student’s Wife,” Carver writes:
“I’d like us both just to live a good honest life without having to worry about money and bills and things like that. You’re asleep,” she said.
“I’m not,” he said.
“I can’t think of anything else. You go now. Tell me what you’d like.”
“I don’t know. Lots of things,” he mumbled.
Well, tell me. We’re just talking, aren’t we?”
“I wish you’d leave me along, Nan.” He turned over to his side of the bed again and let his arm rest off the edge. She turned too and pressed against him.
“Mike?”
“Jesus,” he said. Then: “All right. Let me stretch my legs a minute, then I’ll wake up.”
In a while she said, “Mike? Are you asleep?” She shook his shoulder gently, but there was no response.
I mean, who hasn’t been there? Sometimes I just want to sleep and dream of sexy female robots and stealing a car and driving it down to Miami and joining the Hurricanes (a team I don’t even like, which makes the dream weirder) and picking off not one but two errantly thrown passes over the middle and returning them for touchdowns against hated rival Notre Dame, and I guess just not waking up to talk about life and stuff. Too much to ask at this hour goddammit?
But this post actually wasn’t about Carver or my aborted dreams of football glory. It was about the late John Leonard, who died late last year from lung cancer at the age of 69. Leonard’s book review section in Harper’s was always the first thing I turned to when I’d get the magazine. Guy always had quirky, wide-ranging book choices, and his reviews were beautifully written in their own right. Benjamin Moser has since taken over for Leonard, and I’m just having a really hard time getting excited for his New Books findings. It’s just not rocking. Anyone have any favorite reviewers?
And we have a winner…
If only Bush had been a little more horrible
And, no, it’s not Don D., or Roth. A German-Romanian Cruella De Vil lookalike took home the sort-of coveted literary prize, over some other writers who may possibly have deserved it more, despite not living and working under the thumb of a Romanian despot. But, hey, we can’t all be so lucky. Not to take anything away from Herta (sorry about the Cruella thing), but, uh, really? This is worse than that time in 1997 that Dario Fo won, an egregious event that I just read about last week and have been outraged by ever since. Politics? Art? Europeans intimidated by our raw American power and awesomeness? I feel like I need to write a strongly worded letter to someone, but the thing is is that baseball game is on in three hours, so I have to read some pregame analysis and be glad my national sport isn’t soccer, a game for cowards.
Boo, I say.
Not tonight, darling. I have to finish this John Vanbrugh play. And, uh, I have a headache
I imagine that I’m not the only one that carries around up to half a dozen books with them everywhere they go, at all times. I really hate having any kind of down time with nothing to read. Doctor’s office, in line at Walgreens, on my way to sell books at the Strand, less exciting moments in foreign movies I’m watching, or for when my lady friend is watching Top Chef. Whatever. One of the few I was lugging along on the train today—Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (which is pretty great so far, fyi)—had an interesting passage that got me to thinking about the previously unconsidered victims of my solipsistic and obsessive habits.
“You must have brought something. Books? I never saw you without a green bag of books.” To her mother she says, “He reads everywhere—in the subway, between the acts at plays, at intermissions in Symphony Hall, on picnics, on dates.”
This speech conveys considerable information to Aunt Emily. She watches Sid’s eyes close in mock agony, while a really very engaging smile takes over from the sheepishness on his face. “Well, there’s so much to read, and I’m so far behind. Everybody’s read ten times more than I have.”
“What did you bring?” Charity asks. “Restoration dramas?”
“I’m taking a rest from those. I’ve just got some hole-fillers. Middlemarch, The Idiot, things like that, novels I should have read but haven’t.”
When is it okay to bring along books, and when is it not? Dinner parties? The bar? Bar Mitzvahs? Sporting events? Sporting events where your team sucks and them losing is a foregone conclusion but you still want to tacitly show your admittedly wavering support? Please advise.
My favorite book cover ever
That, friends, is a fucking cloud unicorn.
Jacket art is an interesting thing. Besides blurbs, it’s one of the factors that most influences your casual, agendaless bookstore browser (as well as your rating on Jimmy Chen’s list, or so I like to believe). It is with this in mind that I’d like to share with you the greatest piece of cover art ever made. I came across this Kosygin-era collection of Ballard short stories last week while buying flannel in a thrift store, and I haven’t even really been able to get past the cover yet to start reading the stories. Besides the cumulo nimbus unicorn and rose and torso-less cloud lady, there is also a jauntily colored glider flitting around that mighty rock formation to the right. Directly underneath that monolith is what looks like some kind of Dodge Dart that probably gets 13 miles to the gallon and two people talking, probably about the Jets and their improbable 3-0 start (Ballard was something of a futurist, after all). Actually, you probably can’t see that part, due to the poor quality of my photography skills. How does it all tie together? Knowing Ballard, probably with the unicorn partially dismembered and violated.
JGB: Gone too soon.
Banned Books Week
It’s finally here, and I’m ashamed to say that, of the top ten most challenged books in 2008, I have only read one (some Scary Stories book I got off the Bookmobile when I was a child which, while it maybe should not be banned, did haunt my dreams for many years with its tales of chicks whose heads fell off when they undid their scarves). But we all know books are dangerous, and can warp fragile, gelatinous minds with their subversive ideas. The thing is, by forbidding access to something, you’re only going to give it that much more power to smite the reactionary forces of good (evil). Like, I’d be upset if someone banned Going Rogue, because that thing is going to be awesome for everyone. However, if you did have the power to ban one book for all eternity though, which would you pick?
R.L. Stine in the house
Jovial Bob!
Around this time last year, I was assigned a story for work that involved me checking out local haunted houses and evaluating their various levels of scarytude. Easy enough. There was a wrinkle, though. I was to have a pair of dauntless companions—in this case, beloved Goosebumps author R.L. “Jovial Bob” Stine and Peter Gilmore, current high priest of the Church of Satan (you really can’t make this stuff up).
The other day, I came across some Goosebumps-related Internet ephemera, and realized that I still had R.L. Stine’s email address, which I then used. Stine, author of a bazillion books and a known Wodehouse enthusiast, was gracious enough to answer a few of my questions.
I remember when you and I went out Haunted Housing last year, that you mentioned loving the Kindle? Could you briefly talk about how that happened? Doesn’t it feel kind of blasphemous?
I don’t think it’s blasphemous at all. I think the object is to get people reading. Does it really matter what package or device they use to read? This isn’t mine—I forget where I saw it. But someone wrote: What if we’d been using the Kindle for the past 300 years, and some guy came along with a new thing he invented, called a book. We’d laugh at him. We’d say: “But it only has one story!” “You can’t change the type size!” “You can’t download any more stories into it!” “It’s too heavy to carry!”
I still prefer a book, but the eReaders have a lot to recommend them, especially if they catch on with young people.
Presumably, then, you’re comfortable with technology. I have to admit, though, that I didn’t see R.L. Stine iphone apps coming. How’d that happen?
I think I was one of the first children’s authors to do an online chat, back when it was hard to do, and maybe six kids would show up. I’ve always loved messing around with technology. But I also think it’s important to go where the kids are. My web site—rlstine.com—has all kinds of fun stuff to get readers involved. And my new iPhone app— R.L. Stine’s Haunted House of Sound—seemed like a really fun way to reach my readers.
Here at HTML Giant, we style ourselves as the “internet literature magazine blog of the future.” Is this how you pictured the internet literature magazine blog of the future?
I have to admit I never pictured the internet literature magazine blog of the future until I checked out HTML Giant. Reading through the blog was kind of like being on Mars. All these authors I didn’t know! A lot of it seemed to be from a different planet, which of course, is why it’s so enjoyable.
How’d you stay so prolific over the years? Has your approach to writing varied in that time?
I don’t think I can quit. I wouldn’t know what else to do all day! I don’t think my approach to writing has changed at all. Someone described writing as an “addiction,” and in my case, I’m pretty sure it’s true!
Sweet list
I’m usually pretty suspicious of anything bearing the label ‘insider’. They lure you in with the promise of forbidden knowledge and the hope that, one day, you yourself can be one of the select few keepers of the evertindered Promethean Zippo. The other day I came across such a guide put out by some merry band called Fang Duff Kahn. Edited by Mark Strand, this fanny pack-sized volume has suggestions from various book sellers, publishers, poets and authors for off-the-radar books that they think are worth sharing with us. There are some pretty obscure choices in here, and not a few small-press selections. Apparently, proceeds from Books: The Essential Insider’s Guide also go to First Book, a group who buys words for children in low-income families, which is rad. It’s a good, if random, source of new stuff to read (especially if you’re tired of looking on your own backlogged list of books that you’ve been meaning to buy but haven’t got around to buying for a few years).
If you could name-drop just one favorite “forgotten, underappreciated, or little-known work of literature,” what would it be and why?
Taking old one-eye to the optometrist
Dr. Millmoss gave hippo gas.
Had some minor eye surgery today. Negotiating the New York City subway with no depth perception (they taped an aesthetically displeasing patch to my face) is tricky business. Would it kill them to use some Snake Plissken apparel? Anyway, I started Interneting one-eyed artists, and revisitedsome of the timeless cartoons of James Thurber, one of which I share now with you all, my beloved dual-eyed brethren. Beware of hippo, nature’s most aggressively hungry creature.
Drew Toal—
Who wants to go on a midnight run to Barnes & Noble later? Anybody? Uh, anyone at all?
Drew Toal—
“When you think about the community, it’s a place where kids can go and have an opportunity to learn more and have more access to what’s going on in life and things of the past as well.”
Drew Toal—
As a follow-up to Michael Schaub’s riotous post about hitting the publishing motherload the other day, I though I’d share this guy’s project, which could possibly make him rich, but will likely just result in a wasted year of life. It also ties to Sam Pink’s last post, because the writer ‘relates’ to Julie Powell. Nice.
The other Blake
I was just over at the Morgan Library, checking out this new exhibit, William Blake’s World: “A New Heaven Is Begun.“ The show contains engravings, illuminations, original diaries and manuscripts, letters and an audio clip of “The Tyger,” read by none other than Jeremy “Die Hard: With a Vengeance” Irons. It is awesome, and it is there until January 3. If you love images of biblical torment and poignant reminders of God’s implacable wrath as much as I do, this show is not to be missed.
Brief q+a with Laird Hunt (updated with comments re: Ulysses thread)
I’ve read some good books put out by good presses this year (Graywolf, Dalkey and the NYRB come to mind, but I’m not discounting Eugene Lim and Ellipsis’s [Ellipses?] forthcoming books from that list. Can’t wait to check those out). But I don’t think anyone has hit it out of the park yet in 2009 like Coffee House. Evenson’s book completely eviscerated me and others just like me and probably others not at all like me (it has that kind of broad appeal). It’s easily the best story collection I’ve read in quite awhile. The other beauty, though, is Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt. The story of a guy named Harry, shattered by an accident that took the lives of his family, as he attempts to reconnect to life, love and sanity kicks serious ass. Remarkably, Hunt just keeps getting better, and it excites me to think that we haven’t even seen his best yet. I emailed with the author a little bit, and he fielded my asinine questions, which I just sent to him en masse, with wit and aplomb.
I was reading your playlist suggestions on the Times website, and I was pretty blown away to read that you wrote Ray of the Star in six weeks. Do you normally write that fast? You strike me as more of a deliberate writer, agonizing over word placement and rhythm and other aesthetic concerns. Six weeks!?
I’ve never written anything that fast, although years ago I wrote the first draft of my first book, The Paris Stories, with considerable speed (and a lot of cigarettes). Of course there was a good deal of reworking, after I had done the first draft of Ray, but it was nothing like my experience with the first three novels, each of which unfurled themselves slowly over a period of years. Both Indiana, Indiana and The Exquisite lived happy plot-free existences for at least 2 or 3 years before I saw the stories in them and could start to think of ways to shape those stories into something interesting. Ray’s story and the plot built in and around it were there from the beginning. As were those bloody sentences.
Not the spurs, Cormac!
What would you do if your favorite author (living) punched you right in your face, and then beat you into a coma for good measure? Sue? Have them put in prison, where they might not ever write again? Or pretend like it didn’t happen, in the hope that said violent wordsmith would continue to produce uninterrupted the works that you love so much?
This is the position in which Patton Oswalt’s character finds himself in his new, fantastic film of loserdom and obsession, Big Fan. Kudos also belong to Michael Rapaport, for his spot-on portrayal of a loudmouth Eagles diehard.
5 Comments
August 31st, 2009 / 1:13 pm
August 31st, 2009 / 1:13 pm
Bludgeoned with romance
Nicholson Baker’s quirky latest novel, The Anthologist, is comprised of failed poet Paul Chowder’s ruminations on poetry and how unrequited love for it has essentially ruined his life. Through it all, though—the rejections from Paul Muldoon, Chowder’s lady friend leaving him, the failure of his floundering flying spoon poems—he clings to the words and lives of Roethke, Bogan, Swinburn, Keats and the rest with a tenacity not seen since Bob Backlund’s crossface chickenwing rampage. It has actually inspired me to start reading poetry again, which I haven’t done regularly in some time (any recommendations?). All his talk of olde timey poets has also pushed me to check out Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder, a lovely book exploring the connection between gentlemen scientists of the day and iconic poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. Dudes were making enduring discoveries and creating timeless art long before they could even grow a proper pre-Victorian mustache! All very impressive. I suspect the era’s precociousness had something to do with all the frock coats, shoe buckles, pantaloons and widespread leeching. God save the Queen.
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August 27th, 2009 / 12:28 pm
August 27th, 2009 / 12:28 pm
Sunshine state
I was on the phone yesterday with Michael Greenberg, talking about some photo project thing, when it came up that he was in L.A. discussing the film rights to his most recent memoir, Hurry Down Sunshine. 
For those of you unfamiliar, it’s the story of his then 15-year-old daughter’s sudden and complete descent into utter madness during the summer of 1996. To me, Greenberg sounded understandably unsure as to whether he was comfortable with putting such a personal and emotionally ravaging experience up on the screen where, presumably, that adorable Abigail Breslin would play the cutest little crazy person America has ever seen. But hasn’t he had already let the cat out of the bag by writing the book? But he’d lose creative control if he signed the rights over to a movie studio. But he’d likely get a ton of money. In a similar situation, I’d like to think that I’d walk away, but I’m not sure that’s the right move. After all, I’d really love to have the flatscreen and signed Michael Vick Eagles jersey. Oh, and a butler. Actually, I’d probably hire Blake to be my butler, cause that’d be funny, right? Blake the Butler! Oh, and…
Power quote: Seduced By His Touch, by Tracy Anne Warren
Let's just be friends, okay?
She lifted an eyebrow. “You want a truce, do you?”
“Yes, most particularly in the bedroom.” His fingers inched toward the small of her back, pausing to draw clever little circles over a spot where she was extremely sensitive.
Damn him for knowing about that spot, she thought as she arched involuntarily beneath his touch. Her heart hammered, telltale moisture gathering between her thighs.
“It’s not as if we’d be breaking any rules,” he pointed out with husky persuasion. “Quite the contrary, in fact, since our union is sanctioned by the laws of both God and man. So why deny ourselves? Why not enjoy what pleasure we can find?”…
In a devastating move, he stroked his hand over her naked bottom., then slid a pair of fingers deep into her aching core. Her spine arched, instant bliss flooding her system.…
And he was right, she did love it. And she would be devastated if he stopped. But he had to know that already, since her body was quite literally weeping from the ecstacy he’d given her, and was giving her still.
