The two writers do match their chosen candidates, then. Angelou, with a well-known and colorful life story featuring odds overcome and the triumph of the human spirit, has been embraced as an icon of middlebrow empowerment. With her, you know exactly what you're getting because you've gotten it so many times before, and yet you can congratulate yourself for (mildly) bucking the system. Electing Clinton would make history, but it also promises to bring a familiar presence back to the White House.
Morrison, as the only living Nobel laureate in literature in a fundamentally unbookish nation, is a homegrown exotic, the embodiment of the American notion that if you can't quite understand it, it must be literature. She is an overwhelming presence, handsome and stately, with a magnificent voice. Like Obama, with his Harvard degree and pristine, international sleekness, she seems too good and too smart for us, the sort of American appreciated by foreigners with obscurely discriminating standards. The electorate famously prefers guys they can imagine dropping by for a barbecue over intimidating intellectuals, but that insecurity has been biting us in the ass for the past eight years.
Thursday, January 31
The battle of the literary endorsements
Salon's Laura Miller on the presidential endorsements of Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison:
The Big Green Bookshop
Opening a dream bookshop:
Simon Key and Tim West took redundancy last August when the branch of Waterstone's they worked at closed in Wood Green, north London, leaving the local community without a local bookshop. Angered and depressed. they decided to open their own shop and depression soon turned to elation when more than 700 people joined them in protest at the closure. Buoyed by this local outpouring of emotion they quickly found a suitable 700ft premises, just off the high street close to where Waterstone's had traded. They hope to fill it with approximately 8-9,000 titles.
These gents have a blog and it looks awfully familiar. An Atlantic Ocean separates us but through our matching blog templates we have formed an unshakable bond. What a beautiful place, this Internet.
Wednesday, January 30
Two from the Times
The Times reports on an interesting new online literary show:
“Titlepage” will combine elements of “Apostrophes,” a popular French literary program; “The Charlie Rose Show” on public television; and “Dinner for Five,” in which a group of actors discussed their craft, on the Independent Film Channel.
The Times comments on Steve Jobs' dismissal of Kindle on the basis that "people don't read anymore:"
A survey conducted in August 2007 by Ipsos Public Affairs for The Associated Press found that 27 percent of Americans had not read a book in the previous year. Not as bad as Mr. Jobs’s figure, but dismaying to be sure. Happily, however, the same share — 27 percent — read 15 or more books.
In fact, when we exclude Americans who had not read a single book in that year, the average number of books read was 20, raised by the 8 percent who read 51 books or more. In other words, a sizable minority does not read, but the overall distribution is balanced somewhat by those who read a lot.
Tuesday, January 29
Herman, Edgar & Me
In eighth grade I sucked at life. Even more than I do now. In English class the delightful* Lady Finnegan's teachings went in one ear and out the other. Honestly, I still don't really, truly know what an adverb is. I mean that sincerely.Interestingly, of all the classics we read that year the only story that I remember engaging with on any real intellectual level was Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. I read it several times. Thinking back to adolescent me, that attraction makes a lot of sense. But Hart Crane, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, much like the adverb lesson, went in one ear and out the other. I was not ready for them. So, in what is far from my first attempt to bridge the chasm in my knowledge of early American literature, I picked up Melville's Complete Shorter Fiction and Poe's Complete Stories and Poems at the library. I will read them both incompletely.
Incidentally, today is the 163rd anniversary of the first publication of "The Raven" in the New York Evening Mirror. Happy Birthday, Raven! What? What's that you say? You say, "Nevermore." Oh you incorrigible Raven!
Also:
"The Raven" performed by the incomparable Vincent Price
Spectator review of a new Poe biography
Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia
I knew about the Baltimore Ravens...
...but I had no idea about the mascots.
*No.
Monday, January 28
First of a 50-part series
The Literary Saloon informs us of an intriguing project the Columbia Spectator has underway. Fifty States of Literature is described as "a list of 50 books that we think capture the essence of each state, all while telling a great story along the way." They kick things off in grand style with Alabama and To Kill a Mockingbird.
I foresee bitter debate in the Spectator editorial room on the topic of whether to go with Moby Dick or The Scarlet Letter for Massachusetts. Oh and then there's Little Women. And somewhere out there I hear someone saying something about Infinite Jest. But I'll tell you what, if they want to nail the essence of Massachusetts they couldn't go wrong with the WASP high jinks of The Wapshot Chronicle.
I foresee bitter debate in the Spectator editorial room on the topic of whether to go with Moby Dick or The Scarlet Letter for Massachusetts. Oh and then there's Little Women. And somewhere out there I hear someone saying something about Infinite Jest. But I'll tell you what, if they want to nail the essence of Massachusetts they couldn't go wrong with the WASP high jinks of The Wapshot Chronicle.
Blue Highways
A few years ago I was unemployed and spending much of my time feebly cobbling together a series of short stories that I have long since abandoned. There was a brief stage where I seriously considered setting out in an automobile (a contraption I did not and do not own) with a sack of Moleskine notebooks, a chunk of my savings account, and the misguided notion that I could pen a great American travel book. I would travel on America’s back roads, visit America’s small towns, and talk to America’s battered middle class.I ended up making it as far as the Pioneer Square-Skid Road District, home of Elliott Bay Book Company. It was there that I picked up Bill Bryson’s The Lose Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. I’m no connoisseur of travel literature, I’ve never read Chatwin or Theroux or Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. For some reason my first stop was Bill Bryson. This was a terrible mistake.
I am loath to quote an Amazon reviewer, but M. Leslie has The Lost Continent pegged when she writes: “There's no detail of his travels, just a repetitive litany of how bad the food is, how horrible the motel, how fat the tourists, and how dull the road.” The tone is consistently caustic, mean-spirited and condescending. What a unfortunate missed opportunity to write a worthwhile book about America.
If I were to do it, I thought, I’d do it all differently. I’d roll into town, seek out the local diners and saloons, the mom and pop shops, the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers. I’d approach the people and the towns with genuine interest and curiosity. I'd treat those I encountered with respect rather than mockery. Ah, but one thing led to another and I got myself employed. The dream quickly faded, but I still felt there was a need for that book.
So it was a great relief to read William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways recently and discover that I’m off the hook. THE great American travel book has already been written. Wheras Bryson struck out, Heat-Moon hammered it out of the park. His warmth, optimism and passion for American people and places shine through on every page.
In March 1978, having recently lost his wife and his job teaching college English, Heat-Moon departs Columbia, Missouri, and sets out on a three-month long trip over the back roads of the United States in a van he calls "Ghost Dancing." The book gets its title from the blue back roads of old American highway maps. Refreshingly, Heat-Moon is rarely the star of his travelogue. Blue Highways is memorable for the author’s ability to find fast friends wherever he stops. Peppering his prose with history, great conversation, philosophical musings, and the poetry of Walt Whitman, Heat-Moon offers an intimate portrait of an America often passed by in the age of interstate highways.
Nameless, Tennessee. Dime Box, Texas. Hat Creek, California. These places you'd be lucky to find on a map have a history worth telling and people worth knowing. With his compassion and fearlessness, Heat-Moon introduces us to boat builders and saloon keepers, a runaway teen, a born-again Christian, fishermen, farmers, college students and small town cops. How fortunate not only that a man would chronicle this kind of journey with exacting detail but that he's also a damn fine writer. I can't recommend this one highly enough.
William Least Heat-Moon in his own words:
Salon interview
Powell's interview
Sunday, January 27
Nikola Tesla: Strange Genius
Kurt Andersen and Studio 360 tackle Tesla. Fascinating character. Very sad that the most exposure I'd had to Tesla before listening to this podcast was watching David Bowie portray him in The Prestige, the 2006 magician picture from Christopher Nolan. Tesla remains in the shadows of Marconi and Edison even though he trumped a couple of the inventions for which they're best remembered--invented the radio before Marconi and his AC walloped Edison's DC. Tesla was also pals with Twain, which earns him abundant cool points. Want more cool points? He invented a freaking death ray! Anyway, give the show a listen. Mike Daisey lends his storytelling talents to great effect.
In the year 2000.....
.... fat kids won't play sports in P.E., they will play video games.
With the Government desperately trying ever more imaginative ways to improve rates of exercise and participation in sport, officials are considering encouraging schools across the country to put the new generation of "active computer games" on the curriculum, to help the most at-risk youngsters out of their sedentary lifestyles.
Read this.... Take a look....
Saturday, January 26
Powell's Lost blog to return!
J. Wood, everyone's favorite Lost scholar, will be back in the saddle at Powell's blog writing about Season 4. Mr. Wood's knowledge of literature and philosophy is rather astounding, and his passion for Lost is admirable. His show-by-show analysis enables one to engage with the show on new level. Plenty of folks love Lost without reading J. Wood, but they'd love it a lot more if they did.
Friday, January 25
Blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog
My that's a lot of books on blogs! But where would you get this idea:
Many bloggers really don't write much at all. They are more like impresarios, curators, or editors, picking and choosing things they find on line, occasionally slapping on a funny headline or adding a snarky (read: snotty and catty) comment. Some days, the only original writing you see on a blog is the equivalent of "Read this.... Take a look.... But, seriously, this is lame.... Can you believe this?"
The Populist
Are crime books easier to write than 'serious' novels? I think the simple answer is a great crime novel is just as difficult to write as a great serious novel. Marketplace demand for crime fiction generates of glut of rapidly penned crime novels and, relatively speaking, a paucity of entirely sloppy serious affairs. I would submit that it is easier to get a crime novel published than a serious novel and that might be where things get confused. I speak with years of expertise in the publishing industry. And by that I mean I frequent bookeries, reading only the serious offerings but holding nothing against the only slightly lesser crime books.
Peter Wilson gets the gas face
This is maddening. So you're gonna go to Sierra Leone, roll up your sleeves, dig in your heels, and do some nitty-gritty investigative journalism. Alright, that's great, we need more like you, Peter Wilson. Wait, what's that? You say you're not going to report on important issues confronting the people of Sierra Leone as we speak, you're going to leave that to noted scholar Kanye West? Ah, I see, you feel your time is better spent quibbling with the timeline laid out in the memoir of a former child soldier. A young man who survived a youth of unfathomable horror, was brought to the United States by UNICEF, earned a college degree, and is now dedicating his life to protecting the human rights he was denied. You say Ishmael Beah was 15 when he became a child soldier and not 13 as stated in his book. I say bravo, Peter Wilson, for chasing after this whale of a story with such gusto. Maybe for your next assignment you can go to the Congo and critique the cafeteria food in Dikembe Mutombo's hospital.Thursday, January 24
Irene Némerovsky
Recently much ink has been spent exposing the unfortunate details of Irene Némerovsky's literary life. We turn to the Cliffs Notes version. Jewish French woman builds literary fame in France with anti-Semitic novels. Jewish French woman dies in Auschwitz at the age of 39. Jewish French woman's Suite Francaise is translated to English more than sixty years after her death. Jewish French woman becomes a best-selling author in America and is "lionized as a significant writer of the Holocaust" even though said novel does not include a single Jewish character. The New Republic covers all the fascinating details.
Time Machine
Wake me when the War of the Worlds gets going. I mean to take nothing away from Mr. H.G. Wells but come on, the speed of travel hastened, cities got bigger, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer. Surely Herbert George was not the only man of his day to foresee these happenings. Still, if you've gotta sell books I suppose it can't hurt to call these forecasts remarkable:
About 80 percent of the dozens of predictions in Wells’s 1901 book, Anticipations, were at least partly right and 60 percent were “extremely accurate,” writes Paul Crabtree, a retired federal analyst. Wells foresaw dramatic increases in the speed of travel, with most people transported in independent road vehicles and only heavy freight moving by rail. He recognized the future of the airplane, but relegated it to a footnote. He expected the size of cities to expand exponentially until the New York metropolitan area encompassed 40 million people—it has 19 million residents today. He thought the “irresponsible” wealthy class would grow, as would a poor, uneducable underclass whom technology would render unemployable. He predicted the decline of marriage and an increase in childless unions. Machines and technology would become the primary means of waging war, he wrote; military victories would be won “in the schools and colleges and universities.” He foresaw English—“but perhaps French”—becoming the dominant world language. He recognized the globalization that is a hallmark of the world economy a century hence.
Evildoers
Watched two movies last night. A German one and a Danish one. Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven and Adam's Apples. The former was very good, the latter merely good. Both were dark. But that's neither here nor there. What excited me most about the double feature was that each film included a Bond villain from the two best Bond flicks since the early days of Roger Moore. Gottfried John, who you may remember as General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov in Goldeneye, plays a loathsome magazine reporter in Küsters. Mads Mikkelsen, who plays a terrorist banker who bleeds from his tear ducts in Casino Royale, plays a priest who bleeds from his ears in Adam's Apples.
In related news, the title of the latest Bond installment was revealed today. Quantum of Solace is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad title.
In related news, the title of the latest Bond installment was revealed today. Quantum of Solace is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad title.
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