Empty handed

In addition to the cache of books discovered beneath the tree there was also a rectangular strip made from a substance others more worldly than I knew to be 'plastic.' Apparently I can use this plastic strip to barter for books at Barnes & Noble Booksellers. I know not what possible utility this plastic could serve the purveyors of books, but I am never one to quibble with current trends in bartering--as outlined in the just released Old Barterer's Almanac 2007--especially when, as in this case, I seem to have gained the upper hand.

It may or may not be interesting to note that until just recently I had always been more of a Borders man than a Barnes & Noble man. Borders, as you may know, began in Ann Arbor, and the flagship store on East Liberty really is quite marvelous. When I lived in Boston I used to go out of my way to shop at the Borders by Downtown Crossing even though I lived nearby the BU Barnes & Noble as well as the Prudential Center Barnes & Noble. Just one of those silly quirks of brand loyalty I suppose. But here in Seattle I quite prefer the downtown Barnes & Noble to the downtown Borders (Borders still reigns supreme in the music and DVD departments, but this is Book-Loop, where such ephemera are cast aside in favor of more scholarly pursuits). Perhaps as my college days grow more distant my bond with Borders slowly crumbles. Or perhaps it is simply the case that the Barnes & Noble is more comfortable, their staff far less intrusive as I browse, their patrons far more convivial. Granted, neither of these nationwide behemoths can hold a candle to the local gem that is Elliott Bay Book Company, and so this entire paragraph becomes obsolete.

Because of my allegiance to Elliott Bay it probably comes as no surprise that my Barnes & Noble gift certificate, while received with much appreciation, has caused me some frustration. I stroll through the aisles at Barnes & Noble in search of books I know to be plentiful at Elliott Bay and I come away wanting. No Davies, no Cheever, no Percy, no Marcus. Why, not even Catch-22 or The Brothers Karamazov, two classics that seem to have unforgivably slipped through the cracks of their shelves and mine. At one point I held Richard Ford's The Sportswriter in my hand. I put it back to browse some more and when I returned some time later, deciding that at the very least I could get that for now, it was nowhere to be found. I stormed out, no books in hand. Sure, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, the holidays scurried away leaving the literature section in something of a drought. Hopefully a restock is in order, or I'll have to shift back to Borders.

But seriously, I did stumble across a Colson Whitehead book of essays regarding New York titled, The Colossus of New York. Not sure if either Bryan or Louis have read this, but seeing as how Bryan is now unashamed to refer to himself as a "New Yorker" I figured this might be of interest. I read the introduction and skimmed (it's true!) through other portions with great delight. If I, who has passsed through New York only a handful of times, find the book of interest, I thought others here might feel even more strongly about it.

Also stumbled across a book called 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, or some such foolishness. It seemed decent. But really, is every novel by Ian McEwan and Don DeLillo worthy of being placed in a top 1001? 1001 isn't really a lot when you consider the list begins circa 600 BC with Aesop's Fables.

A good haul

On Monday morning a large cache of books was discovered beneath a tree off Lambert's Cove Road. Here is how the treasures were divided:

Books now in my possession:
Sixty Stories - Donald Barthelme
The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - George Saunders
The Areas of My Expertise - John Hodgman
The Paris Review Ineterviews, Volume I
The Better of McSweeney's, Volume 1

Books for Mom:
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live - Joan Didion
Brick Lane - Monica Ali
The Echo Maker - Richard Powers

Books for Dad:
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines - Janna Levin
The Geographer's Library - Jon Fasman
Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
The History of the Siege of Lisbon - Jose Saramago
Yiddish with George and Laura - Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman

Books for Brother:
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006
A Fictional History of the United States (with Huge Chunks Missing)
100 Hikes in the Inland Northwest

What books did you all get? Louis, you get anything good?

Books for the non-reader

I have this brother. Smart chap, a graduate of a fine Big Ten institution, a fan of many "literary films" and, from what I know, a generally thoughtful and soulful person. But you put a book of more than 200 pages in front of him and he'll act like a eight year old staring down a heaping pile of slimy lima beans. He ain't having it. The occasional exception to the rule seems to be the random sci-fi or fantasy novel--books that lay far outside the realm of my notable gift-selecting prowess. For years the only book that I gave him was a volume of Simpsons comics each Christmas. This went on for about six years until, with me in college and he in his mid-twenties, it just didn't feel right. I have since moved on to giving him the annual collection of Best Non-Required Reading, a gift he says he enjoys but one is never sure just how much of it he actually reads.

This year I have been giving much thought to what novels I might be able to give him that won't go unread. I have considered The Gunslinger, the first volume of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. People seem to like, but who knows, the only King book I have read is The Shining, an altogether different affair. Then there is Neal Gaiman's American Gods, a fairly literary novel with enough fantasy that its length might prove to be a non-issue. Also, I have considered Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision, a humorous debut novel about a twenty-eight year-old slacker who takes a drug that cures his chronic indecision and soon finds himself romping about South America. While my brother might greet the humor and subject matter in Indecision warmly, I want not to have him think I am sending him some sort of not-so-veiled message about his own life--which would not be the case--so I have shied away from this one temporarily.

But, in general, what are some good books for the non-reader? Off the top of my head there are some obvious non-fictions like the work of Klosterman and Sedaris--breezy, fun books that seem to appeal to the well-read and unread alike. I struggle a bit more when trying to generate a list of novels. Perhaps this is because I am an elitist when it comes to the book gifts. Indeed, King seems rather too populist for my gift-giving sensibility. Something like Life of Pi is a swell choice, I think. And, while some skimmers might disagree, I believe the shorter novels of Murakami are a fine selection for a person such as my brother with an apparent taste for fantasy but an aversion to literature.

I could ramble on longer, but I come to you now from the communal computer in my apartment building and folks are waiting. If they only knew how urgent this Book-Loop correspondence was they would go upstairs, take a nap and give me more time, but no, they seem quite impatient.

Let's talk periodicals

No, the name of this blog is not Zine-Loop, but we should be open to the discussion of all things readable, whether it be books, magazines, skywriting, lost person notices on milk cartons, Marmaduke, graffiti scrawled on the side of speeding boxcars, and even an equation which governs particle settling velocity in fluid under laminar conditions tattooed on the arm of a confused engineer.

Two Book-Loop members who are not active contributors have expressed that they cherish their periodicals so much they have not the time for book reading. It's perfectly understandable. I now find myself in a situation with a new job and a plethora of magazine subscriptions (most of which came my way through gifts and free offers) and I worry that book time might be lacking. The larger issue facing me is that amongst my numerous periodical subscriptions there are only a few that I consider essential reading. I will probably subscribe to The Believer, The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated for the remainder of my life. Dime, ESPN The Magazine and Stuff are dying slow deaths. URB, Esquire, Wired, Time Entertainment Weekly are not likely to be renewed beyond their current run. Playboy is in limbo as well. The Economist is a new kid on the block and I look forward to the start of the free one year subscription I received in exchange for 900 or so Delta Sky Miles. The Paris Review and The Atlantic I enjoy reading, but I am not a subscriber. I think I'm saving those for my wizened, fireside-sitting, pipe-smoking years, which I plan to dive into somewhere in my mid-thirties.

What periodicals do you read? What periodicals do you recommend? What periodicals would you read if you had more time? What's the word on Mother Jones? I spent some time checking out the magnificent magazine collection at Elliott Bay this afternoon--a swell way to kill a rainy day while waiting on Pats/Colts--and was quite overwhelmed. I realize that the best way to find magazines you like is by reading magazines for yourself, but with so many hundreds of magazines out there I figured it would be neat to open up a little dialogue about the wonderful world of periodicals. I'm here to listen.

Recommended

Especially for you, Ben, you would absolutely love it.

Pastoralia Ramblings

You might recall that my time with George Saunders was the literary highlight of my Bumbershoot experience in September. At that time I am fairly certain I was only familiar with the writer through an interview on The Sound of Young America and a discussion between he and Ben Marcus that is included in The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers. Saunders is a fascinating character. He has a B.A. in geophysical engineering, and worked in that field for about 15 years, picking up an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University along the way. He now teaches creative writing at Syracuse, and just this year he was awarded a 'genius grant' from the MacArthur Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship. I have just now gotten around to reading some of his short fiction. I picked up Pastoralia at the library earlier this week, and after reading the title story I remembered why I so much enjoyed hearing him read aloud nearly two months ago. There's a certain charm to his satire that I think is missing in the work of many others. I don't know if 'charm' is quite the right word, but there is an honesty and a playfulness to it all rather than a lurking coarseness and bitterness. Don't get me wrong, his writing can be quite dark, but it always seems to maintain a hint of optimism that is slightly antithetical to his reputation as a distopian writer. But perhaps not. Regardless, he is an original and important American writer. I recommend his work.

Listen to Saunders on The Sound of Young America (Begins at 22:05)

I have also been continuing my journey through the drug-, ego-, and testosterone-fueled history of 1970's American film in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. A little too gossipy for my tastes but a damn fun read. I wish I'd been making notes along the way because there are just too many great anecdotes to recount. One of my favorites involves the strategic drug use of the bat shit insane Dennis Hopper:

One director wouldn't use him after lunch, when the alcohol kicked in. Another knew that Dennis would grab whatever was around--uppers, downers, what have you--and worried that, say, if Dennis took one drug during a long shot in the morning and a different one during a close-up in the afternoon, the energy levels would be different, making it impossible to cut them together. The two men went through the script and agreed on what drug Dennis would use in each of his scenes. When Hopper got the next day's call sheet, there was a notation at the bottom indicating the appropriate drug.

I suppose this tidbit is of particular interest to me because it perfectly illustrates how, while the era is remembered for its freewheeling approach and active abandonment of Old Hollywood techniques, the people involved in these pictures were quite serious about their craft. I suppose that's obvious, you don't produce several of the greatest works in the history of film by simply ingesting drugs and letting the cameras role, but it's one of the major points that I take away from the book. Well, that and the understanding of how, like with so many great writers and musicians, the ego and ambition that fueled the work of, say, Peter Bogdanovich and Bob Rafelson, created relationships with friends and lovers that were tumultuous at best. They were endlessly philandering, self-absorbed and destructive. Indeed, it sometimes seems as though these traits are mandatory for achieving greatness in the arts.

So how might this relate to the previous Book-Loop discussion regarding the acquisition of a writer's sometimes upsetting biographical details. Perhaps it's instructive that my new understanding of the salacious details of these filmmaker's private and professional lives has done little to weaken my appreciation of their work. If anything, reading the book has probably enhanced my appreciation of the films. My perception of Hollywood is that it's a seedy place--always has been. I expect bacchanalian excess and dirty double crossing. Not only do I expect it, but I think it adds to the legend and might even be an essential part of America's (dwindling) love affair with motion pictures. The written word is very different. Filmmaking is a group affair, vulnerable to in fighting, abuses of power and mutiny. Writing is a solitary act, it is personal. Why I place writers on a higher moral plane I cannot really say. I think it's mostly affect, but maybe it also comes from the (false?) idea that writing comes from the soul while movie making is one big put on--actors, costumes, make-up, sets, special effects, etc.--and even when it's a personal tale or a so-called auteur picture it lacks the one-on-one interaction that a book offers.

Ah, this post is a rambling mess. I seem to ramble much more on this blog than I do on my own. I'm not sure why, but I like it.

Winning excerpts

"Instead of sulking, [Manny Ramirez] was more likely to put his cell-phone camera down his pants, take a picture, and interrupt other players' interviews to show them the image. Kevin Millar, apparently, was not impressed. Once he walked over to a naked Ramirez, pointed at his groin and exclaimed, "Forty home runs and 140 RBIs, and with this penis!" - Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top


"[Bob Rafelson] was handsome in the Jewish way, a shock of dark brown hair over a high forehead, rosebud lips frozen in a permanent pout under a fighter's battered nose." - Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood

Up from the ashes

After several weeks of literary dormancy today the gears in my brain strained into motion. Actually, they were humming from the get go. I woke up, grabbed José Saramago's Blindness and was enthralled right from page one. An incredible feeling after nearly a month without focus or patience. Whatever the reason (and I think I know it) I seem to be back to normal.

After breakfast I made my way to Elliott Bay Book Co. to do some browsing. I read the preface to Natural capitalism and very nearly bought it before having one of those little internal meltdowns where you decide that you must get out of the store as soon as possible because you simply do not possess the resources to procure even a single book, and if you stay much longer you will almost certainly wind up exiting the store with five. So I put it back and made my way to the door. A little book titled "Speech of Chief Sealth" caught my eye and I stopped to give its innards a once over. An elder lady crept up alongside me and leafed through a different Native American non-fiction. She wandered off just as four books indiscreetly tumbled from the shelf and onto the rustic wooden floor. I quickly made an effort to shepherd the lost books back to where they would be more comfortable. Once I had placed the books back neatly on the self the lady, offering a reaction sufficiently delayed so as to suggest an incertitude of cuplability where there truly was none, asked "Did I do that?" I responded, "Oh, no, I'm fairly certain it was gravity." I gave her a wry smile and once again made my way to the exit. Netted in once again, this time by an autographed copy of Michael Lewis's latest book, The Blind Side, my departure was delayed further. I soon spotted Feeding the Monster, which, were I of sound mind when it was released a few months back, I would have surely bought it the very day it came out. So I bought it.

Walking home I passed a smiley faced man handing out reading material on the street. 'Jesus Saves!' 'Go Vegetarian!' 'No on I-933!' I was not sure what he was distributing but I accepted his offering graciously. I made an attempt to read it. I could not. It was a blank sheet of white paper. All his papers were blank. The man is a genius! I went into a shopping center where I sat and read the introduction to Feeding the Monster. Upon leaving I passed the man again but declined his handout, telling him, "No thanks, I've already read it."

Recent Perusals

Well, we can add Swann's Way to the growing list of novels that I lack the wherewithal to navigate in my current mindstate. I am in a significant reading rut and have decided to forsake the novel and spend my time perusing some short story masters.

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories - Flannery O'Connor
Sixty Stories - Donald Barthelme
Collected Stories - Isaac Babel
Selected Short Stories - Honoré de Balzac

Of the four I have to this point only completed a significant sample of O'Connor and Barthelme. This is my first experience reading either writer. "Grotesque" is the word that comes up again and again in discussion of O'Connor's work. Her stories are matter-of-fact and menacing in their portrayals of salvation. I am glad to be acquainted with her, and in awe of her ability to be so harmoniously dire and comedic. Barthelme is a writer of whom I could see the Book-Loop clan holding a mixed opinion. To me the man is downright brilliant. His short stories are brief, their relative simplicity belying an ingenuity of form. Why must "Postmodernist" be a pejorative label? But aside from the merits of his experimental style, Barthelme's stories are witty and far more playful in demeanor than the existentialists he is often lumped with. If a reader cannot delight in reading "Me and Miss Mandible" they should probably begin searching for a new hobby.

And yes, I am reading some non-fiction. On Mike's recommendation I picked up The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour Of Mankind's Greatest Invention at the library. Pretty self-explanatory from the title, and, let me tell ya, the story is more interesting than you might imagine and the writing is far less stilted than you might fear. I also got a dense looking tome called The History of the English Language, an acquisition made with much optimism that shall probably return to the library unread.

Also:
The Office's John Krasinski adapting David Foster Wallace story
Reimagining Madame Bovary 150 years after her birth
The Wanderer: The Last American Slave Ship
Can Men Write Romantic Novels?
Housekeeping vs. The Dirt, by Nick Hornby

Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke

Zach Warlick, my liaison to the world of irony, finds a keeper:

Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke

Bah!

Awaken, Book-Loopers! I will shoulder some of the blame for the recent silence - The Plot Against America was more like The Plot Against Midnight, as every subsequent page brought me closer to sleepy time. I'm still toting the volume with me, but only for the nebulous purpose of returning it "when I get close to the library," a strategy that has already once led me to renew my three-week loan. I'm currently waist-deep in Operation Yao Ming for journalistic researc purposes, and after that, I think I'm going to explore the newest Michael Lewis work, The Blind Side, about the changing of the NFL under Lawrence Taylor (or something like that). That's right: it's sports book month here on the loop!

Regarding Jack London

From "The Man Who Would Be Jack London" in the August 2006 issue of The Believer:

Writing in the New York Times Book Review, E. L. Doctorow pronounced London "the most widely read American author in the world." That's right. More than Twain or Hemingway or Melville. Something of a literary footnote in his own country, Jack London is considered an emblematic American author in Japan, Russia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. The Call of the Wild has been translated into eighty languages, more than any other American work. An Albanian anthology of American literature pictures Jack London along with Mark Twain on its cover. A collection of London stories in Russian sold 200,000 copies in the first printing. On his deathbed, Lenin asked his wife to read him a Jack London story.

Who knew? Also, this man who readers of our generation (if they're anything like myself) know only from Call of the Wild, White Fang and perhaps To Build a Fire, wrote more than fifty books! This is a swell article that offers insight into a life that some would call "as romatic and ruggedly American as any novel ever written." We also encounter a rather comedic fellow who is a part-time Jack London impersonator, part-time hardware store manager.

H.L. Mencken, master of the hedged compliment, on London:

I have often argued that he was one of the few American authors who really knew how to write. The difficulty with him was that he was an ignorant and credulous man. His lack of culture caused him to embrace all sorts of socialistic bosh, and whenever he put it into his stories, he ruined them. But when he set out to tell a simple tale, he always told it superbly.

Spade Swann Bloom

Just to catch you up on things, my readings of both 1993 Was a Bad Year and City of Spades have been unsuccessful. With Bad Year I spent a few days reading and re-reading the first several pages. Nothing difficult to follow, nothing so beautiful that it demanded I linger, I just couldn't get beyond them. Whatever the reason I did not have the concentration for this book at this time--maybe it was too hopeless and not something I need to be reading right now. It is a very small book with fat print. I could read it in a about an hour. I could, but I couldn't. So, onto City of Spades. Not, as it turns out, "Britain's Catcher in the Rye. That label is designated for the second book in MacInnes's London Trilogy, Absolute Beginner. Meanwhile, this book, as the title not so subtly hints, is about London's influx of colonial Africans in the 1950s. With this one I made it to around page 50 before I decided that I was forcing the matter and I just needed to move on to Swann's Way. That's the thing, I should have read Swann's Way first. It has been sitting on my night stand waiting for me while I made these two futile attempts to read two books that I have only a mild interest in. I don't like giving up on books so early in the game but I've had some distractions and maybe Proust will allow me to focus.

I have also been hopping around Harold Bloom's Genius. It is a fun book in its own way. The manner in which Bloom has grouped the 100 writers and thinkers together into lustres makes the book easily navigable for someone like me who opts not to read all 814 pages in succession. The entries on each individual are brief, some of them providing an overview, others focusing on more specific qualities that Bloom finds most interesting. I have read so few of the works discussed in this book, but even without an intimate appreciation for many of the writers I am thoroughly enjoying the way in which Bloom makes connections between them, shaping in my mind a sort of outline for a family tree of poets, playwrights and authors. Inevitably it is Shakespeare who pops up again and again, but not always. Like the Book of Writers Talking to Writers, Genius is a book I will revisit often, whether it be for inspiration, edification or simple pleasure.

Quoting Davies

"Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best."

"The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need."

Old School

No, not the Will Ferrell movie that made you giggle the first few times you watched it but has since faded into irrelevance. I speak now of Tobias Wolff's novel that goes by the same name. A sharply drawn picture of life at an almost absurdly literary boarding school. In a strange way I think this might be the first book that has made me feel at all disappointed that I did not have the opportunity to attend a prep school of this sort. I mean, they get visits from Robert Frost and Ayn Rand and (if not for illness) Ernest Hemingway! Heady stuff.

These visits represent the source of much of the book's drama. Each visit corresponds with a school-wide contest in which the visiting writer selects one student's work to be read aloud and published in the school's literary journal. Most important for the students, of course, is the fact that these legendary writers would be selecting them as the winner--in their minds paving the way for an inevitable life of literary fame. The Frost visit is humorous, as he selects a student's work that he believes is a clever parody of his own poetry. He accepts the piece as good-natured ribbing, even though the student's intention had been only to write something Frost would find beautiful.

Rand also selects a student's work in which she is able only to see herself. But the contest takes on a secondary importance, as Rand's speaking engagement destroys our protagonist's enjoyment of her work. Like many young scholars he reads The Fountainhead and becomes enthralled with Howard Roark's boldness and virtuosity. Then, in this case from Rand herself, he learns what the writer really had in mind and the idolatry quickly vanishes. I strongly recommend the Rand section for anyone who still clings to the misguided belief that her philosophy is worth a damn. Wolff's characterization of Rand is hilarious, and even if it is a little harsh I would say that it is fully deserved.

The climax of the tale coincides with the approach of Hemingway's visit. Some of the students pretend to dismiss Hemingway, but none of them are able to avoid ripping off his style. In an effort to channel Ernest's ability our aspiring writer takes up the practice of re-typing Hemingway's short stories. The strategy works, in a sense, but the outcome is not quite what the young lad had in mind--the fact that the story ends up being a little more like F. Scott than Ernest is the least of his concerns.

As for complaints, I shall now turn you over to Thomas Mallon of The Atlantic, who has captured my two central points quite crisply:

Old School's somewhat pedagogical nature inclines one toward a few schoolmasterish objections. Its gradual accrual (three episodes from it appeared in The New Yorker) may have lulled the author into writing a last chapter that, although a rattling good story, seems more like an appendage than a conclusion.... And let me say this, above all, Mr. Wolff: the lack of quotation marks around the dialogue is a ridiculous piece of postmodern pretentiousness that has no place in your book. Not when it can stand with the best of what some old boys (Louis Auchincloss, Richard Yates) have produced in a waning American genre.

Reading between football contests

Mahfouz: A calm voice of dissent
Mahfouz's Nobel lecture
Flaubert: A Biography
Foucault the Neohumanist?
Donald Barthelme's Syllabus
What I Did at Summer Writers’ Camp
Saunders: The Cats of 9/11
Amis: The Age of Horrorism

The Great American Novel

Great baseball satire, almost too light to write about. I read it in such a herky-jerky manner that I might have missed some stuff, but I doubt it.

I give it three PLDS games out of five.

Peak Oil

Being an environmental nerd (thus far mostly in theory - the practice is lacking, seeing as I spend a large portion of my time driving around LA), today's news of the oil deposit discovery down Mexico way got me thinking for a spell of black gold.

So far on Book-Loop it appears that the prevailing winds blow toward fiction. That's fine, but I am caught in a non-fiction spell that goes back 4 or 5 books or so and shows no obvious signs of letting up (the books at my bedside are What's the Matter with Kansas?, James Beard's Theory & Practice of Good Cooking, and The Joy of Sex, which I suppose you could consider fiction depending on the circumstances of the moment.

My question is, does anyone have any plans for non-fiction in the near future? If so, I would suggest a book on Peak Oil (which is exactly what it sounds like - the final peak in oil production. Ever.). I have not yet read a Peak Oil book, but I would like to. I was confronted most recently with the subject while reading an article in Harper's. Apparently, there is a lively Peak Oil community in the United States and I would assume around the globe. Peak Oil is not simply an inevitable event in the future, it is a movement of the present, populated by thinkers, crazies, scholars, business persons, and, well, anyone who has the ability to think critically about the consequences of a powerful, charging pattern of digging, pumping and burning that could competently serve as a shorthand for the recent history of human behavior.

This Harper's article included predictions, or rather meditations, of what life would become on an earth at Peak Oil, or on the immediate come-down. LTS mentioned thought experiments a while back. The thought experiment, or imagination experiment, of considering a realistic vision of an oil-dry planet is an intriguing exercise that probably is not undertaken enough outside the open discussion of a meeting of Peak Oilers. The scenarios are of course infinite, but some simple questions can be shocking if considered honestly.

What sort of war might we see over the last large deposit of oil on Earth? What might happen to our society if the price of gas rose to ten dollars per gallon over a period of ten years? The funny thing about thinking about this issue is that the only "what if?" in the scenario is the way in which the events of the peak and decline of oil production will occur. That they will occur is a plain fact.

Has short-sightedness always been a quality of the masses of humanity? I would think that the rapid pace of millennial (where are we, modern? Post-modern? I don't know these things) society would cause us to look ever farther into the distance since the consequences come at us faster and we will actually be around another 60 years or so to live more of them, supposedly. But, as a general observation, I feel that we are more short-sighted than ever in our hunger for progress.

Happy Days

While we spend this Labor Day weekend feeling sad that Bryan will not be able to finish The Great American Novel, let us all be excited for me, who found a copy of Lydia Davis's award-winning translation of Swann's Way at the Seattle Public Library. Not only that, but also City of Spades, the first novel in Colin MacInes's London Trilogy ("Britain's Catcher in the Rye," says the March '06 issue of The Believer) and John Fante's 1933 Was a Bad Year. Yes, Book-Loop friends, between these books, last night's 826 benefit featuring Dave Eggers, John Hodgman, Sarah Vowell, and Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), plus tomorrow's Bumbershoot fun with Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Charles D'Ambrosio, Michelle Tea, The New Pornographers, Spoon, Common Market, Blue Scholars and so many more, it should prove to be a most stimulating Labor Day weekend for Book-Loop's Pacific Northwest Sector.

Dumbass

I forgot The Great American Novel at work yesterday, and I have only about 30 pages left, so it's kind of frustrating because I won't be back at work until Tuesday. In order keep things Roth-ing, I randomly picked up The Plot Against America from the library today. What has everyone heard? I'll probably forge ahead regardless, but I'm curious.