June 01, 2006
Spam The Masterpiece
Along with this blog, I've been neglecting the hissycat email account. I finally checked it today and found several dozen spam emails containing large excerpts of Anna Karennina.
One email, with the subject line **VL-JUNK** Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real, contained this passage:
shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife's last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. "I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going," he said, getting up. "No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself.... But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on.... I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!" Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud voice:-- "Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!" he said, with tones of hatred in his voice. "Love those that hate you...." Darya Alexandrovna whispered timorously. Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but it could not be applied to his case.
Posted by hissycat at 01:25 AM | Comments (16)
March 31, 2006
The Price Of Salt
I know it's early for for the Paperback of the Week, but since Maud pointed yesterday to an exhibit of Patricia Highsmith's life taking place in Switzerland I thought it would be an opportune moment to share one my favorite lesbian pulp novels-- one of my favorite novels, period-- with anyone who happens to be reading.
Patricia Highsmith wrote The Price of Salt in 1950 and published it in 1951 under the pen name Clare Morgan. It is a strange, beautiful novel; a romance about two women, and a suspence novel, too. It is deliciously moody and strange. I wrote a blurb about Price of Salt on Wikipedia, if you'd like more background info (be kind-- I wrote it either right after or right before I was finishing my thesis, so I was totally cracked out and my spelling is totally cracked out. Also, I just checked that outside link-- which I so did not add-- and it leads to the dumbest review/ essay I have ever read ever. Please don't read it. It will only discourage you/ make you sad.) There are no murderers, but there is a private detective and a cross-country chase and all kinds of issues about identity.
The Price of Salt is one of the four novels I covered in my thesis on lesbian pulps (the other three were Spring Fire, Odd Girl Out, and The Girls in 3-B). This sounds really corny, but I got really attached to Carol and Therese. I lived with them day in and day out for so very long. I miss them.
On a side note, the article Maud linked to I found to be very, very strange. It's titled, first of all, "Patricia Highsmith's secret life revealed." And then there's this:
"We didn't know until now how intense or excessive her love life was when she was young," Ulrich Weber, the curator in charge of the author's literary archive, told swissinfo.
"She experienced her homosexuality and didn't suppress it, as was the case for her fictitious hero, Tom Ripley."
"Excessive"? I find that to be a rather odd remark for a biographer to make about a subject. Or anyone. In any event, Highsmith made no secret of her sexual preferences. In the introduction Highsmith wrote to the Naiad Press reissue of The Price of Salt in 1986 that comes across pretty clearly (I don't know if this essay is included in the 2004 WW Norton reissue of the Price of Salt, which was released under the name Patricia Highsmith, because I don't own and haven't had a chance to take a look, but if not try to get your hand on the old Naiad edition. They're still around in used bookshops and they have that essay which provides some interesting publication history.) Descripitions of her in her youth paint her as a WASPish, butch lesbian. She lived in Greenwich Village, frequented dyke bars, and vacationed on Fire Island. I once heard a radio interview in which Marijane Meaker, a lover of Highsmith's and the author of the lesbian pulp Spring Fire, the memoir Highsmith: A Romance of the Fifties, described Pat as looking like Prince Valiant. It's hard for me to understand what the curator is finding so surprising unless it just never occured to him that even in the 1950s lesbians had lesbian sex.
The article also says nothing about her rabid anti-semitism and racism. I love Highsmith's writing. I think she is a fascinating artist, but she was, by all accounts a very difficult person.
Posted by hissycat at 04:16 AM | Comments (516)
March 27, 2006
Paperback of the Week
Another expert/ psychologist/ scientist - authored pulp book. After novels with tragic/ punishing endings, this was the most popular format pulp publishers used for homosexual content. Dressing titillating material in a cloak-- ok, a skinny scarf-- of scientific and social value was a reliable strategy for getting their books through the mail without disturbance from the censors.
I think what I love best about this cover is the color scheme. Ouch. That so-called "normal" woman is like, totally modular, man. She's about to run away with someone named Spring Rayne she met in her pottery class. They think about going to California eventually; right now, they're just living on the road and the power of female-to-female love. If you move the book around, the women, like, totally, leave trails behind them, like, in the air. Whoa, dude. Those colors are, like, seriously intense. Love on.
Posted by hissycat at 06:22 AM | Comments (28)
March 19, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
Posted by hissycat at 06:44 PM | Comments (4)
March 10, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
Posted by hissycat at 04:41 PM | Comments (1)
March 07, 2006
Another Month, A Brand New Slut
Issue 46 of Bookslut is now up, including the reason I was a cranky bitch last week. Well, one of the reasons.
Posted by hissycat at 09:20 AM | Comments (4)
March 06, 2006
Google Library Project And Why Nigel Newton Is A Fuckwad
Nigel Newton is a bloody idiot. Guardian Unlimited Books ran his dumb-ass article, Google's Literary Land-Grab, on Saturday to let you know why he thinks you should boycott Google to protest Google Print's Library Project. Newton is, of course, a publisher, although even greed can't fully explain his insane animosity towards Google nor his rabid fixation on 'rights' that are against virtually everyone's interests save possibly his own (and even that is debatable). The only possible explanation for Newton's stance is sheer dim-witted lack of comprehension and technological illiteracy.
If you click on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens in Google Book Search, you may find yourself taking an unexpected journey. Google's ambient advertising programme hotlinks to a dating agency called Great Expectations Dating ("Find Your True Love Today"). How crass is that? We can be sure that Dickens would have thought it so. Indeed, he would probably have reserved a special vituperation for Google's literary land-grab.
There are two aspects to this land-grab. The first involves scanning out-of-copyright work, provided by the great libraries, and surrounding it with such advertising. That's not illegal, though it is of cultural concern.
That's some ballsy rhetoric, calling "scanning out-of-copyright work" a "landgrab" when it is not only perfectly legal but also will make those works more, not less, widely distributed. Landgrab has the connotation of hoarding. Stockpiling copyrights would be a good example of landgrabbing. Distributing works already in the public domain? Not so much.
And yes, a Great Expectations Dating Service is kind of tacky. But so is an Edgar Allen Poe Pizza, a(nother) spineless adaptation of an Austen novel, and the novelization of the movie adaptation of Great Expectations featuring a nude Gwyneth Paltrow draped on the front cover (I shit you not). The hyper commercialization of publishing does indeed concern me, but I think that perhaps there are other, more alarming examples of such crassness than Google's initiative to catalog information and make cultural works more accessable.
The second part of Google's literary predations, in the case of American libraries, involves scanning in-copyright works - for the purpose of publication - without direct prior permission of the copyright holder. That is to say, the author or his or her estate. Google's decision to scan first and ask permission later with copyrighted works is playing fast and loose. In America, it has already landed Google with a huge lawsuit from publishers.
It is authors who will suffer most. Dickens isn't around to defend the integrity of his work. Were he alive, he would certainly have tried. He campaigned with vigour on the issue of copyright. [emphasis mine]
Hey Nigel, let's play a game called, Spot The Logical Fallacy! Dickens "isn't around to defend the integrity of his work" because he is dead. How, exactly, will he suffer most? I'll get back to the issue of living authors in a moment, but let's stick with this Dickens fellow, on whom you are so obviously and yet so disengenuosly hung up.
A number of his works were copied in America and he was an early advocate of international copyright protection. In England, he went to court to stop someone writing a continuation of A Christmas Carol. He dedicated Pickwick Papers to Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, who introduced the Copyright Bill in 1837.
If Newton is seriously proposing that no one but Dickens ever be permitted to make a profit from Dickens' work, then every publisher that prints 'A Christmas Carol' or 'Great Expectations' needs to stop their presses right now. I don't mean Google. I mean Harper Collins or Penguin Putnam or whoever because they don't own no fucking copyright so who are they to turn a penny off Dickens' work. Obviously, Newton has no idea what he is saying, or else he is lying through his teeth. There is a huge difference between plagerising a work in part or whole or reproducing and selling it at a profit without the writer's permission during the writer's lifetime, and making it available to the public cost-free after the author's death.
The problem with having absolutely no copyright protections isn't all about being unfair to the writer; having NO protections also hurts the community by making it disadvantageous for living writers or artists or inventors to share their works with the public. Readers of Dickens' books should be aware of his feelings for societies run entirely by the untempered profit motive, with no eye towards the common good-- NOT GOOD. The American publishers of Dickens' day, much like the caricatured capitalists in his stories, contributed nothing of value yet profited off of the work of others (in this case, authors). When the author of the book in question is dead, however, it's doing the author any harm to distribute that cultural work widely and freely (it's not doing them any harm to distribute it at a cost, either, which is what mostly happens to works in the public domain; I mean, debate the ethics if you must, but dead's dead: as of yet no author has actually "turned in her grave"). Meanwhile, depriving the public of access to the work definately does harm the community at large.
So I call upon internet users worldwide to boycott the Google search engine until it ceases to scan books in America without prior permission, and desists from its mission to place ambient advertising on the great literary works. Switch your search engine from Google to MSN or Yahoo today, until you hear Google has withdrawn from the type of activities that have been described in another context as acts of "kleptomania".
No. Just-- no.
The worst thing is that the actual money paid to authors and publishers for these silly ads is negligible. So is the number of book purchases arising directly from these links (certainly they were when Google's representative came to see me last autumn). Authors are being ripped off however you look at it. They need to say something about it, loudly.
Of course, that's exactly NOT what authors are saying, but it's so much easier for publishers to put words in the mouths of dead authors than to listen to what living authors are saying.
Publishers also have serious responsibilities in this matter. It is possible in Google's contract for publishers to withdraw any book at any time. I call upon all publishers to do so immediately until these critical matters are resolved. No one will write much in future if they don't receive money for it because books are suddenly free on the net.
Frankly, any writer worth her ink should care more about reaching readers than about hoarding her precious words, and the world would be better of without those kinds of books, which have been glutting the market anyhow.
Plus Newton is being willfully thick. He knows the books are not going to be "suddenly free on the net." He said it himself.
At the moment, Google only offers a proportion of a copyright book for free. But it insists on scanning 100 per cent of each book it loadsBut it insists on scanning 100 per cent of each book it loads and, moreover, on owning the rights to the resulting digital files of authors' works. This is a Pandora's box. It must be regarded as likely that a subsequent management regime at Google will pressure publishers to allow it to offer 100 per cent of the text as battles for market share are joined against the other mighty search engines.
Publishers also have the responsibility to make sure that when it comes to hosting electronic content in future, it is their own websites that host the downloads and the scans of text and audio. There is no reason to hand this content to third-party websites.
Now he's just making himself sound foolish. Newton does not understand the technology. Not that I'm a huge techie myself, but at least I get this much: Google Library, much like actual libraries, will index the books for content. People using Google Library, much like people using their local public library, can then look up books according to a particular subject that interests them or whatever. Now, since Google indexes content using computers, they have to scan the entire book into the computer in order to do this. To put this in somewhat condescending, anthropomorphic fuzzy speak, Google has to let the computers 'read' the entire books so it can can catalogue the books by topics. Otherwise you're just sifting through first sentences. Now that doesn't mean that Google has to let the user read the entire book they pull up-- Google can choose to show you just the first sentence-- but they have to first scan and index all the content in order for the search to make sense and to have results that are useful.
University and copyright libraries also have serious responsibilities in their dealings with Google. I believe that libraries such as the Bodleian and Harvard may have misinterpreted the missions with which their universities have entrusted them in handing over part of their collections for scanning. They may also have thrown away the biggest commercial opportunity in the history of their academic institutions by regarding content as somehow free (though they do get their own copy of the digital file). It isn't free of course.
Funny after all his bellyaching about commercialization, Newton thinks libraries aren't commercial enough. Because god forbid Universities might want to promote the exchange of knowledge and information for its own sake and for the common good instead of increased revenue.
If there is to be money made out of scanning, the libraries themselves, not Google, should make it. Art collections provide a good example, as they often support themselves by licensing the images they have spent years (and millions) collecting. Yes, scanning a huge collection overnight is a huge expense but it does not have to happen overnight. The collections were written over two millennia; the online solution might decently take a long time.
It is all about making money. It's not about the authors and it's about the cultural implications of a Great Expectations dating service, and make no doubt about it, Nigel doesn't care one whit that without Google's inititaive it would take decades to digitize these books and even then it would be done with profit as a sole motive.
What Google is doing to books is, by contrast, positively indecent. It is a good search engine, frequently used by all of us. I for one would like to see it keep to that core business. Until it lays off literature, or else pays for it, I hope the readers of the Guardian and many others will join this boycott.
Yes, let's all of us stop using Google and Gmail and blogger and all of the other tools that Google has provided to literate people at no expense to us simply because you, Nigel Newton, happen to be the world's greatest fuckwad. Great idea.
Posted by hissycat at 09:16 PM | Comments (152) | TrackBack
March 05, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
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March 01, 2006
"I Just Thought They Make Great Pussies Nowadays," Says Asia Argento
This will be my last J.T. Leroy post, I swear. I feel that once The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is released into theaters, the J.T. Leroy will finally be allowed to die a natural death and go gentle into that dark night of the film canister forgotten on a shelf. It's easier that way.
Meanwhile, Asia Argento raved, raved like she had a lightbulb or two loose in the attic! Today's Gawker reports back from the premiere, director Q&A and after-party:
Argento gave quite a performance during the Q&A following the screening. When she was asked how the revelation that Leroy was nonexistant affected the movie's impact, she began a beautiful ramble. To heavily paraphrase: "What is truth? Am I telling you the fucking truth right now? How do you know what the fucking truth is?" She then talked about her personal experience with J.T. and how she had now idea he didn't exist until everyone else found out about it. "I mean, I slept with J.T. I touched his pussy. I just thought they make great pussies these days. I don't know. I couldn't see, it was dark. He said he was on hormones, that was why the boobs were there. I just thought they make great pussies nowadays." Move along folks, nothing to see here.
Posted by hissycat at 12:51 PM | Comments (8143)
"Entertaining and Honest and Funny and Tragic"
Since there's a deadline approaching, I'm busy wasting time skimming things like Everyone Who's Anyone In Adult Trade Publishing, Propagandaville and Tinsletown, Too, a listing of literary agents interspersed with the editor's personal correspondances with the agents listed and including his own letters of rejection from those who have rejected his manuscript. The exchange at the bottom of the page I find especially engaging:
Dear Mr. Jones: I very much enjoyed the freshness of your work, however, I find that there are two kinds of writers, those that want to write and those that need to write. If your story is as thinly disguised as I suspect, Mr. Jones, then you are one of the latter, and I count you in good company. Those who want to write, generally, want to be published and rewarded for their efforts. Those who need to write are primarily concerned with the product of their labors, recognition being an afterthought. In light of the current hard cover fiction market, I see no way in which your work will be published in its current state. Whether or not you wish to subscribe to the parameters of popular fiction in order to alter the fate of your work is up to you. In the end, you may be happier with the job at McDonald's. Warm regards, Hillery Borton
Dear Ms. Borton: You apparently want popular fiction to continue to be fatuous, formulaic and stupid. Why? Why not give people a chance to read something fresh and true? Something entertaining and honest and funny and tragic? You sound like someone with some integrity. Why, then, wouldn't you rather work at McDonald's than continue to promote the fatuous, formulaic claptrap and crap that passes itself off as popular fiction? Thanks for your warm regards. Gerard Jones
Dear Hillery: I got a letter from Seva Gunitskiy dated 7/31/01 which said: "Gerard, Go ahead and send the rest of the GINNY GOOD manuscript, but address it either to myself or to Hillery Borton, Putnam Editor. Best, Seva." I sent the manuscript in, addressed to both you and Seva, and haven't heard anything from either of you. It's been over a year. What's up with it? Thanks. Gerard Jones
Out of office auto reply: Hillery Borton no longer works at Penguin-Putnam.
Posted by hissycat at 12:37 AM | Comments (2)
February 27, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
Posted by hissycat at 05:10 PM | Comments (6)
Sad
Octavia Butler died on Friday.
Posted by hissycat at 12:20 AM | Comments (1)
February 20, 2006
My Cat Quotes Joyce. Perfectly.
In the kitchen, I am standing in front of the cupboard, holding a can of beans or something. As I start opening the can, Gerty the cat bounds over to my legs as well as a three-legged cat can bound and starts mewling to be fed
Gerty: Mkgnao!
Me: No, Gerty. Your food is in your bowl. This is my food.
Gerty: Mrkgnao!
Gerty: Mrkrgnao!
Me: For god's sake, Gerty cat, I don't care how well you can quote James Joyce, you still can't have any of my dinner!
Posted by hissycat at 10:17 PM | Comments (8)
February 19, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
What I love about this cover is just how goofy this "dance of desire" is. Like, here, let me express my ravenous hunger for your body by flapping my elbows in the air like a woozy pigeon. I'll sort of march in place to demonstrate the fire that burns in my loins. Then I hold up pieces of my hair and pretend I have horns. 'Cause I'm horny. For you, baby. Oh, and I cross my eyes, too. This is The Dance Of Desire.
Look, her lover's so whipped up she got tangled in the sheet. I mean, look at her! It's like she tried to do the dance, but she wasn't woman enough. The Dance of Desire! It'll get her, oh boy oh boy. Look at that stupified grin-- totally defenless against the hair horns of desire. Putty in her lover's hands.
By the by, I bought some new (old) pulps today from some dude who was selling them on the street. Very exciting.
Posted by hissycat at 06:08 PM | Comments (11)
February 07, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
My sincerest apologies for the delay.
Posted by hissycat at 04:07 PM | Comments (5)
I'm Such A Bookslut
(Psst. The second paragraph should be blocked. I don't know why it isn't, but I'm a little embarassed about it.)
Posted by hissycat at 03:56 PM | Comments (2)
January 28, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
The exceptionally bad cover art mini-series continues.
Posted by hissycat at 01:18 PM | Comments (7237)
January 22, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
Now that's quality cover art if I ever saw it.
Posted by hissycat at 12:29 PM | Comments (17)
January 16, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
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January 12, 2006
Am I The Only One
I've never actually bothered to read any of the JT Leroy books. I'm not easily impressed by macho drug books as a lot, and really, if you've read one teenage drug addict, hustler and truckstop prostitute's memoir haven't you read them all?
But now that I know there is no memoir involved in these novels, I'm suddenly a lot more inclined to read them.
Frey's books still sound like shit, though.
Posted by hissycat at 06:11 PM | Comments (12)
January 11, 2006
A Lone Snark Snarking Out In The Wilderness
Speaking of Frey (ok, I wasn't, but I know you probably were), this is the funniest thing I've ever read. I know, book reviews that are "mean" and "snarky" are not "in style" these days, but now that Frey's a proven liar and a fallen man it is officially a-ok to enjoy Dolan's hilariously withering review-- it is, in fact, the "cool" thing to do, I promise! (via Maud Newton)
Speaking of snark, I just noticed that the Believer dropped the Snarkwatch portion of their website. Well golly, you mean there's no more nice police keeping overly critical voices and positions in check? Uh-oh! Sounds like trouble to me.
Posted by hissycat at 05:46 PM | Comments (8195)
December 30, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Because I'm throwing a New Year's party and I'm stressed the fuck out because Karaoke machines don't just rent themselves, and I don't have time to write a freaking entry, ok?
Also, I just got back to SF from my own personal Lesbian Bars of New York Appreciation Week. So there.
Posted by hissycat at 06:47 PM | Comments (604)
December 20, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
It's back.
Posted by hissycat at 01:56 PM | Comments (64)
December 03, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
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November 28, 2005
That's Gotta Sting
From the Observer:
Our interview with American literary sensation Benjamin Kunkel (Review, last week) was accompanied by a panel of quotes from US reviews, supplied by his publisher. One, from Entertainment Weekly, read: 'Kunkel has succeeded in crafting a voice of singular originality' and omitted the next line ' - one you want to punch in the mouth.'
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Happy birthday, Tao Lin!
(via Bookslut)
Posted by hissycat at 08:40 PM | Comments (13)
November 26, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
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November 19, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
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November 12, 2005
Update: Mother Still Here
No time to write, so instead I leave you with a paperback of the week (that's the second in two days! Oboy!):
Also, this:
And promises of a story tomorrow.
Posted by hissycat at 11:36 AM | Comments (8189) | TrackBack
November 11, 2005
Too Pooped To Post
So I leave you with this little present instead. . .
Posted by hissycat at 08:56 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
November 07, 2005
Why I Love Susie Bright
Susie Bright's respone to Scooter Libby's dirty novel is, in a word, fabulous:
To start with, Scooter could use a good spanking with a hardcover edition of Strunk & White's Elements of Style. His most grievous challenge lies in composition and command of the English language.
She then takes him to task for his abyssmally unerotic erotica, line by line, like the sassy editrix she is.
I'm piss poor at the moment, but if anyone would like to buy me a copy of Susie Bright's book How To Write a Dirty Story I will promise to put it to good use and take all Ms. Bright's advice to heart.
Oh, Susie Bright! She rox my sox!
Posted by hissycat at 05:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 05, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
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November 04, 2005
Editors, Ask Yourselves
Was this article really necessary? Was it? Was the news so important, so urgent you simply could not wait until Sunday to share?
I want you all to go back to your desks and think long and hard about what you did.
Posted by hissycat at 07:36 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 01, 2005
Every Woman's Battle
On a usual Sunday morning on which I wake before noon (which, granted, is already not a usual Sunday morning), I amble on over across the street to Katz's for my lox bagel and New York Times (you can take the girl out of New York, but you can't take New York out of the girl, etc.), which comes as a welcome relief after a long week of getting up and ambling on over across the street to Katz's for my whole-wheat bagel with humus, cucumber and sprouts and New York Times. If Katz's is sold out of the Times, I shrug and return to bed crosswordless but unharmed. The thought of walking to the Castro before the caffiene from my third cup of joe has had time to fully absorb into my blood stream is not what I usually find an appealing notion. Yet, as if pulled along by some unearthly foresight appdo not normally trek out to the Castro in search of the elusive Sunday paper, yet yesterday, as if drawn by some vague foreknowledge, that is exactly what I did.
My premonition was fulfilled. The entire trek was made worthwhile by the pleasure of this littegem of an article.
In case you were distracted by the Maureen Dowd essay on feminism and sexual mores in the Magazine Section or the Iraq war themed Book Review and did not get a chance to fully savor this article, allow me to fill you in.
New Life Ministries, "an evangelical radio ministry," has taken it upon themselves to ship off packages of books "intended to promote Bible-based abstinence from pornography, adultery, nonmarital sex and masturbation" to soldiers in Iraq.
Interestingly enough, there are two different sets of books, one for the boys and one for the girls. For the boys, there is the blue covered Every Man's Battle; Every Woman's Battle comes in pink. Every Day For Every Man is colred in earthy shades of reddish brown and bluish green; Every Woman, Every Day is colored with the turquise and yellow pallette of drugstore eyeshadow. And the girly counterpart to Every Man's Bible (which has on its cover a rugged, South Western landscape) is the Life Recovery Bible, its cover taken up with curly, pastel calligraphy.
Though the article contained no discussion of the differences between the two sets of books, I was struck by the graphic and little summaries of each book included in the inset, which could be a handout for a Language and Gender 101 class.
In "His Battle Kit" the rhetoric emphasizes sexual purity as a battle: "Your malesness looms as your own worst enemy. You got into this mess by being male; you'll get out by being a man."; "It's time to fight. And you realize that your battle for sexual purity will cost you something. It requires sacrifice,, intensity and honor."; "Is it O.K. to have lunch with a female coworker? What about working together on a project past quitting time? Be honest as you evaluate what is going on in your mind and heart. If temptation lurks around the corner. . . run!"
The books in "Her Battle Kit" use the soft, self-hating language of psychology, urging women to reflect and listen to their feelings: "Society has twisted our minds into thinking that if we are drawn to someone, we must want to have sex with them"; "Masturbation is not healthy because it can train a person to 'fly solo,' to operate independently of anyone else"; "'Please love me!' Isn't this the whispered cry of our heart? We may not want to admit it for fear of rejection, but we are all hungry for love."
The man books are about action and practical advice. The woman books are about health and personal relationships. The appeal to abstain from masturbating is part of a noble "battle for sexual purity" that proves masculine and individual virtues like "sacrifice, intensity and honor." Women, on the other hand, are harmed by masturbation. It is not that women need to be strong and fight for sexual purity; to the contrary, women need to be protected and sheilded from the inherent destructiveness and unhealthiness of female independence.
Posted by hissycat at 02:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 29, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
That model, by the way, is Lili St. Cyr.
Posted by hissycat at 07:34 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 28, 2005
This Demographic Has A Terrible Aftertaste
One would hope that the sentence "They live and eat and breathe the demographic." would be the most grisly of whatever article it comes nestled in. Terrifyingly, the sentence, which appears in yesterday's NYTimes article about Simon Spotlight Entertainment, a new imprint of Simon & Schuster "devoted to pop culture for reader age 18-35," was not.
In case you were not aware, these are the people we have to thank for this minor masterpiece and the novelization of Napolean Dynamite. Things to look forward to: the hilariously! titled "Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay," a book about fantasy football, and a The L Word tie-in called "Same Sex In The City."
In short, SSE is the reification of everything vomitacious and dispicable about Publishing: they are interested in making money, not good books ("'The thing that impresses me most about our editors is that they understand that it's not all about the book,' she said. 'It's about the money you can make from that book.'"); they are entirely market-- and marketing-- driven (. . ."when the series 'The L Word' was burning up Showtime on cable television . . . They gathered a focus group of about a dozen gay women to talk about what type of book they would want to read. . . It is not exactly a formula, Ms. Bergstrom said. 'But we usually know what we want to publish,' she said. 'It's then a matter of wrapping the right author and spokesperson around it.'"); authors are selected for celebrity, not writing ("what we decide to publish is greatly affected by our publicity department - who we can get on 'The Daily Show' or who might be great on a radio tour."); they are the whores of a vertically-integrated media conglomerate (Viacom) that is designed to produce cyclicly-reinforced crap in a closed system ("'most of [SSE's authors] have platforms in other media,'" Ms. Bergstrom said recently."; "the imprint sponsors events with the likes of Jane magazine"; "At one recent meeting, the staff was batting around ideas related to celebrities and MTV"; "What Simon Spotlight Entertainment has done - rather successfully in its first year in business - is to tap quickly into pop culture currents."). The entire SSE imprint is, essentially, a PR department for recycled celebrities.
Not that there is anything shocking about what the article reveals. Still, there is something really eerily Stepford Publishers about the piece. Everyone-- the journalist, the subjects-- is so blithely indifferent to the media or publishing ethics. No, more than indifferent-- they seem completely unaware that there are ethics in media and publishing. The opening anecdote of the SSE head skipping Frankfurt in favor of the Aspen Comedy Festival is delivered without irony. There is the suggestion of iconoclasm in the assertion "that an editorial assistant would be given that level of responsibility is evidence that the imprint does not hew to the traditional hierarchies in many publishing companies," would be funny if their corporate whoredom wasn't so dreadful and frightening.
What, exactly, was the aforementioned 25-year-old editorial assisstant responsible for?
"One book of pictures and quotations from the film [Napolean Dynomite] is already in stores, and another, a flipbook of Napoleon's sweet dance moves, is on the way."
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October 23, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Yeah, "Una Mujer" is one of my favorite authors.
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October 22, 2005
Zombie Virginia Woolf/ The Lion, The Witch, & The Product Placement
Because everyone loves a list, Time magazine put out this list of 100 best novels since 1923 (Why 1923? Seriously, do you know why? Is 1923 a year of some particular importance in bookland? Or is it just an easy way out of having to make a decision one way or the other regarding Ulysses, which was published in 1922?)
My favorites include:
The Sun Also Rises (1926)Author: Ernest Hemingway
"Here's the first half of the book: 'We had dinner and a few drinks. We went to a cafe and talked and had some drinks. We ate dinner and had a few drinks. Dinner. Drinks. More dinner. More drinks. We took a cab here (or there) in Paris and had some drinks, and maybe we danced and flirted and talked sh*t about somebody. More dinner. More drinks. I love you, I hate you, maybe you should come up to my room, no you can't . . . I flipped through the second half of the book a day or two later and saw the words 'dinner' and 'drinks' on nearly every page and figured it wasn't worth the risk."
The Sound and the Fury (1929)Author: William Faulkner
"This book is like an ungrateful girlfriend. You do your best to understand her and get nothing back in return."
The Grapes of Wrath (1939)Author: John Steinbeck
"While the story did have a great moral to go along with it, it was about dirt! Dirt and migrating. Dirt and migrating and more dirt."
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)Author: Thomas Pynchon
"When one contrasts Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five with this book, it's like comparing an Olympic sprinter with an obese man running for the bus with a hot dog in one hand and a soda in the other."
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)Author: Virginia Woolf
"The only good thing to say about this "literary" drivel is that the person responsible, Virginia Woolf, has been dead for quite some time now. Let us pray to God she stays that way."
Oh, and there's also this:
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)Author: C.S. Lewis
"I bought these books to have something nice to read to my grandkids. I had to stop, however, because the books are nothing more than advertisements for "Turkish Delight," a candy popular in the U.K. The whole point of buying books for my grandkids was to give them a break from advertising, and here (throughout) are ads for this "Turkish Delight"! How much money is this Mr. Lewis getting from the Cadbury's chocolate company anyway? This man must be laughing to the bank."
It's funny, I do remember becoming very, very interested in Turkish Delight after reading the book, though I didn't know what it was. Turkish Delight and hot coacoa, mmmm.
(via bookshelves of doom)
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October 18, 2005
My Bookjacket Photo
After leaving La Onda last evening, I went home and pondered the wisdom of Agent 007's advice.
I have come to the conclusion that, as a young, unknown with neither book deal nor agent, the only reasonable thing for me to do was to take a sample head-shot. That way, anyone who is interested can know, right off the bat, whether my face is pretty enough to be published.
I took this photo first. As you can see, I have my glasses on in this photo. My glasses not only enable me to see but also, I like to think, lend me a certain air of intellectual gravitas, bestow upon my visage a certain boyish, bookish charm a la Ira Glass, Jonathon Lethem or any of the number of other admired, bookish and bespectacled men.
Then I remembered the Agent's warning that "the standard is higher if you're a woman," and that no one likes a "bespectacled" and "tweedy" girl scribe. I decided to take another photograph, this time removing my glasses first. Here, you can see how I Iook without my glasses on.
As the great Ms. Parker once noted, literary agents don't make passes at girls who wear glasses. Or something like that.
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October 17, 2005
Why, Yes Virginia, There Is Bullshit, Sexism, And Sexist Bullshit In The Publishing Industry
Wow, thanks, for the heads up, Agent 007! As a young, scribbling female, I appreciate all the help, advice and encouragement I can get. I'm so relieved to find confirmation for what I always suspected was true:
Men can look grizzled and weathered and still look cool with the right lighting and scene. Think Jim Harrison and Charles Frazier.Women, on the other hand, have to try harder.
I was going to work on an article this afternoon, but on second thought I think my time would be better spent getting my hair blown out. See, I have learned from this parable:
Editor 007 preempts a fantastic manuscript of heartbreak and renewal. She loves it more than any book she's ever published, even though the author is a thorn in her side. The cover is amazing--completely groundbreaking and attention-grabbing from 30 feet away. The early reviews are universally great. But when the author stops by to meet the editor several months before the book is released, she is disheveled. Her eyeliner is an inch wide. Her hair is a mass of black, swirling strands. A couple of weeks later when the publicity director asks if Editor 007 has any idea what the author looks like, she has to say, "Radio."
You know, when I am working intensely on something, I tend to become dissheveled, too. But in the future, I will be sure to go to bed by ten in order to get my beauty sleep (nothing worse than puffy eyes!) instead of staying up till dawn finding the words I want to mean.
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My Imaginary Testicles
Note: I started this entry last week, or maybe even the week before. In any case, I started it before the Bad Things happened. It is somewhat less timely now, as the New Yorker story is likely no longer available online. Oh well.
I highly, highly recommend the Jeffrey Eugenides shorty story, Early Music that ran in this last week's New Yorker. It is a beautiful, moving story. I love Eugenides.
The last time I read a story by Eugenides in the New Yorker must have been in 2001 or 2002 because it was before the publication of Middlesex. The story was, in fact, an excerpt from Middlesex, the episode involving Cal and the Object. Cal, who is in secret teenage love with the Object, has sex with the Object's brother and is hit by a tractor, the result of which is the discovery of hidden testicles.
After putting the story down, I started imagining what it would be like to suddenly discover a secret testicle. I started to imagine myself in Cal's position (such are my identifying-with-the-protagonist ways). What would I do if I had an undescended testicle? Would I, like Cal, change my identity and live out my life as a man? Would I have surgery? Wouldn't surgery send the wrong message, politically? How would I explain this to dates? Would I have to tell my friends? Would it help me with a book deal?
Now, I had no reason to suspect I might actually have hidden testicles. Unlike Cal, I had had sex without searing pain. I had been examined by a gynecologist. And I had never noticed any, um, lumps on my own. But I'm crazy and live too much inside my own head. I became totally preoccupied with my imaginary testicles. I made all sorts of plans for how to live my life in the aftermath of their inevitable enterance. I mean, I was convinced that I had secret testicles. Sure, there'd been no sign-- yet. It was only a matter of time.
I confessed my fears to my roommate a few days before a bad fall off my bike that left me with stitches in my bottom lip and evil bruises. One bruise in particular, on the inner side of my knee, took on a life of its own. A lump the size of a , yes, of a tesiticle congealed under the purple skin. The lump had a density and consistency unnervingily like those of, yes, a testicle. I made my roommate touch it. "Doesn't it feel like a testicle is growing out of my leg?" She totally agreed.
"Your undescended testicle totally descended," she said. "To your knee."
"I told you so."
Hence, her nickname for me:
Testicle "Knees" Undisclosed-Surname
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October 15, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Yes, I'm one day early, but I'm not quite up to posting anything written yet.
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October 14, 2005
Authors Are So Poorly Dressed
Thanks to a friend, and a friend of a friend, I will be working the LitQuake party on Saturday. No, not that kind of workin' it; I mean the kind of working it that involves stamping hands at the door and not getting paid. But still. I'm very excited. There will be a lot of really cool authors. Anyway, I recently received a follow-up email letting me know where to go, when to go there, and, amusingly what to wear:
Wear whatever you would like, but something presentable. I will probably wear jeans and a nice shirt, a jacket, comfy but dressy shoes, remember, these are writers with no inherent style :)
It kind of warms my heart that while the right coast writers are giving the impression of stepping it up bougie-style*, that the writers in SF, at least, remain incurable slobs.
*That said, I can testify that journalists in NY, at least, still show up places looking like they just rose from a nap in a bush. I interned in New York bureau of a large international paper a few years ago, and I worked under the head of PR (not exactly a typical PR official, as she sat on the editorial floor and acted as a kind of liason between the journalists and 1) other media outlets and 2) the biznazz people on the business floor), part of whose job it was to make the journalists presentable for TV appearances. I think the only aspect of her job I ever heard her complain about was how impereable the journalists were to any kind of style advice she gave them. She actually had to go and buy appropriate, fitting shirts for some of them. Before they were allowed to step into the broadcating space, she would have to re-tie their ties, comb their hair, and sometimes make them change into a different shirt if the one they were wearing happened to be badly wrinkled or stained. These were really brilliant, accomplished professional journalists who did not know how to comb their hair. Actually, you know, I kind of respect that.
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October 13, 2005
More Didion
The Year Of Magical Thinking has just been named a finalist for the National Book Award.
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Joan Didion On Fresh Air
If you are in the Bay Area, KQED broadcasts Fresh Air at one and again at seven. Or, you can listen to it here.
The Year Of Magical Thinking, by the way, is-- well, I can't think of an adequate word. It is exquisite. It, like other books of her, has the quality to render me dumbly mute. I've been meaning to write about it, but have had trouble starting. I will write about it, I don't know when, because I'll want and have to. But I'd like to sit with it in silence for a little bit longer.
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October 09, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
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October 07, 2005
Good News
Kepler's is re-opening.
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October 04, 2005
The Mark Of A Great Writer Is. . . Lots Of Pussy
The Times of London ran this charming article by British writer David Baddiel.
THE LAST TIME I WENT TO Cheltenham, I was interviewed by Professor Lisa Jardine about my third novel, which led to a finely balanced discussion about history, truth, Jewish identity and personal responsibility. . . The time before that, I did an hour and a half of stand-up, which led to a woman coming back to my room, who then sold her story to The Sun. Say what you like about being a comedian and a novelist, it leads to a wide spectrum of experiences. However, I have to admit that, as far as Cheltenham goes, the last is the more defining.
What a drag to have to be interviewed by a woman who is a professor and interested in having a discussion on a book tour when, really, what being a novelist is all about is getting blown by groupies!
Now, whenever I go to the festival, however much I might be looking forward to a searching hour of literary deliberation, once I see those Neo-Classical pillars framing the entrance to the town hall, all I can think about is Rachel W-- for that was her name-- and how she ran away after little more than a dry kiss, pleading boyfriend-inspired guilt; only to reappear photographed looking hurt and bewildered in a hotel dressing-gown, on a piece of fax paper handed to me by a man who came into my dressing-room in Preston three days later from the super, soaraway Sun.
Only a dry kriss? Cock-tease!
I had apparently spent the night with Rachel: I had apparently stripped down to my football socks; I had apparently left without a word, or even a chorus of Three Lions.
You are apparently an asshole.
I sometimes wonder what, if I was a single man without children once again, I would do for groupies. Because the sad truth is that, whilst obviously rock star will always be the top job for bedpost notching, comedian isn't far behind: author, sadly, is a long way down the list, well past footballer, celebrity chef, politician and possibly even local dignitary.
What's the point of being a writer if even the local diginitaries are going to rack up more lays than you?
Maybe in America, the ones with rock star names, Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, Dave Eggers, are rock'n' roll enough to attract them: but most of the time at literary events in Britain the front rows are a sea of blue rinses.
See, I knew I was lucky I lived in America. Sure, I may have less of a chance of being published than a man, and if I am published, my books may be shoved over in the Chick Lit session where they will be dismissed out of hand as unserious, but at least I can take comfort in the fact that the man-authors get their dicks sucked at every stop on the book tour.
Where are the literary groupies? A cursory glance at English literature shows us that not long ago nothing became a beautiful woman more than throwing herself at some laudanum-chomping Man of Letters. Whether it be Lizzie Siddell, Lady Caroline Lamb, or the Dark Lady himself, the list of muses reveals that, before the pop stars carved out this territory for themselves, all you had to do was throw a few couplets together and some bit of top-class totty would be falling over herself to die of consumption for you.
Yes, where are the literary groupies? Who let them get the idea that they could write books of their own instead of being fodder for mine? Bring back the good old days when all a man had to do get into the petticoats of "some bit of top-class toddy" was write some crappy poetry and just sit back and let oppression do the rest of the work!
Now it tends to be someone keen to tell you how your novel alone got the entire book group through the menopause.
Back when the top-class toddy was dead of consumption at twenty, there weren't any of these old hags hanging around and making their silly, feminine "interpretations" of literature.
I have made this worse by writing a novel with a vaguely Holocaust theme. First, this means that the audience becomes even more decrepit-- some are so old now that that number on their arm could be their age-- and second, you're starting from a point where it's much more difficult to move the subject in a bedwise direction.
See, the thing that really sucks about the Holocaust, is that it adds nothing to the bedpost talley.
When I did stand-up, women coming up after the show might say, for example, "you know that bit about anal sex . . ?" Now, it's more likely to be "you know, my grandfather was killed in Auschwitz". Try suggesting a drink back at the hotel from there.
Also, the Holocaust totally does nothing for getting some anal action.
Oh well: as a virtually married man, it makes life easier.
Man, is your wife a lucky woman.
Of course, novelists are, in general, very keen on sex, so I presume it is going on, just that the tabloids aren't interested. You can understand this. If Rachel W had dry-kissed Julian Barnes and run away, The Sun would have had to make up something about how he'd stripped down to his period Victorian socks; how he'd sent her away without even a reading from Flaubert's Parrot. If Jodie Marsh forsook footballers and boy-band members for one night and copped off with, say, Vikram Seth, she'd have to be in tabloids afterwards saying: "He was A Suitable Boy, all right. He kept going and going, longer than all three volumes."
See, the thing is, that's not a bad Vikram Seth joke. If it didn't appear in such a repellant context, I'd have laughed. I hate you David Baddiel for everything you are and stand for, and I hate you even more for ruining that joke.
Of course, Rachel W should have gone for Martin Amis, because then the headline could have been "The Rachel Papers", with pull-out quotes such as: "He offered me Money. It was an amazing Experience. We did it Yellow Doggy-Style. Turns out it's not just Einstein who's got a Monster. Now I'm just hoping that I don't have to go and get myself one of them Dead Babies."
Yeah, why don't you just give that one a minute to sink in. Have fun!
It's not that surprising that there is a prick who feels so entitled to adulation by women, who sees women as sex objects that exist for his benefit and that have no brains or reason to live after they lose their youthful charms. It's just a little upsetting that a newspaper would think it's a good idea to publish it.
Oh, Curtis Sittenfeld. Not that I ever doubted you but, dear god, how you were right.
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October 03, 2005
Parents: The Anti-Brain
St. Andrews School of Austin has returned a three million dollar donation to a family that demanded the school pull Brokeback Mountain, the Annie Proulx story of a couple of gay old cowboys (the movie adaptation of the same name, which has been in post-production at Focus Films for freakin' ever, will finally be released this December), from the 12th grade curriculum. The article, though, does slightly temper the punk rock-ness of the school's decision by pointing out that the story was never actually required reading, merely part of a suggested reading list. It still is, all things considered, pretty punk rock. I just hope the school doesn't face retributions so harsh as to impede their ability to do the right thing the next time some crazy parent or trustee tries to push them around.
Incidentally, when I first read the article, I assumed they were talking about a different St. Andrews School where the movie Dead Poets Society was filmed. Though a horrendously awful film, its link to the school would have added a tasty smack of irony.
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October 02, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Preferably, to Cipriani's.
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September 28, 2005
The Man Who Cried "Wolfe"
In the spirit of Banned Books Week, as well as the news that henceforth, I Am Charlotte Simmons shall be the paperback that dare not speak its name, I feel the time has come, dear readers, for a wee discussion of Tom Wolfe.
A month or so ago, I was listening to an interview on NPR (isn't this how all my posts start) in which Tom Wolfe was promoting I Am Charlotte Simmons while simultaneously making a jackass of himself. Admittedly, this is not too dificult to do, true, but the man it so splendidly it would be a sin of omission not to mention it here.
If you follow anything about books, no doubt you already know how charmingly Wolfe comes off in interviews. For instance, this gem:
The Internet is the modern form of knitting. In the old days women who had nothing to do would knit, but at least you got something out of it -- a pair of socks, maybe a scarf, occasionally a little bedspread. That's mostly what the Internet is, just passing the time. But unfortunately you are dealing with words that can have meaning.Tom Wolfe, apparently, is not aware that women "in the old days" didn't knit because they "had nothing to do" but because they were making things both useful and decorative. Maybe he thinks 'making things' is "nothing," though. Yeah, that's it. Because I'm sure that's how he would describe 'writing novels and essays'-- passing the time. Call me a crazy, hypersensitve, communist feminazi bitch, but I get the sense his disdain of the frivolous extends beyond knitten goods to knitters themselves. You know, women. Heavens forbid women fill their idle time with "words that can have meaning" instead of making him amusing curios, such as blankets.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, though. The old man, after all, is evidently confused by wacky computer technology:
The other problem is that you have to scroll. It is primitive in the sense that the Internet is a scrolling medium. A printed book with pages was such an advance over scrolling. To go back to scrolls is to step into the past. That goes back to monks in the 13th century.Right. I so don't get this. It seems he has confused scrolling on a browser window with scrolling, you know, scrolls. I'm not saying I want to trade in my lovelies for ebooks or what-have-you, but I daresay depressing the downwards-pointing-arrow key is a bit less taxing than the scrolling of 13th century monks.
Mr. Wolfe, by the way, did some of his research for Charlotte at Stanford. It's cute the way he tries to make Stanford seem really debauched and depraved. For the record, Stanford, with its goddamn Christian accapella groups singing in White Plaza, its round-the-clock computer lairs that are always fucking packed, its fistfulls of Marshal scholars, is, if anything, not debauched or depraved enough. The Stanford I went to was Nerdtown. I guess he fell in with a bad crowd. He also has this to say:
But as far as I can tell they are really not bothering with [political correctness]. There is always a faction of activists. When I was visiting Stanford, students were protesting that the catering staff -- they weren't even university employees -- were underpaid. If that's as big an issue as you can come up with, then political correctness is not having a big effect on the students.I'm not sure I understand why he's using a campaign for living wages as an example of political correctness. Maybe he means political awareness, since he spends a good deal of the interview yapping about how youngsters don't pay attention to the news. Maybe he mentions the students agitating for a living wage for workers because it's a totally great example of how self-involved and oblivious to reality college students are. Except that it's totally not. (F.Y.I., the "catering staff" that-- gasp-- "weren't even university employees" that Mr. Wolfe mentions are workers brought in by third-party contractors. In fact, one of the issues central to the living wage campaign is that it is unethical for the university to use contractors whose standards of fair pay and practices fall short of the university's own.)
I mention this all today because it has come to my attention, it being Banned Book Week and all, that Tom Wolfe's books are among the most frequently challenged and banned. Which is funny. See, the NPR interview I spoke of earlier was bubbling over with remarks deriding those residing in the wayward "parentheses" states for being out of touch with 'the real America.' A retarded, tired statement from anyone's mouth, it is just that much more delightful when the mouth in question belongs to an effete intellectual from New York and writer of what 'the real America' calls regard as pornographic filth. Yes, kids. Bonfire of The Vanities made the top hundred and even Charlotte Simmons got pulled from a radio program.
So yes, Tom Wolfe. You are so in touch with the Heartland. I bet, on Sundays, you even ban yourself. Right. And Thomas Freedman is one with the rabble on the street.
P.S. If anyone knows what the fuck he is referring to here, where he tells John Stuart about some "Filofax diaries" that, apparently, no girl goes without these days, please, please do share.
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September 26, 2005
I'm Heartbroken
I so want to see Joan Didion when she comes to San Francisco. I tried to buy a ticket to see her at City Arts & Lectures, but they-- sniff-- were-- sniff, sniff-- sold out. If anyone has a ticket they won't be using or if you have any leads on where I might find one, please please help me out. I'll be sitting at my computer crying and obsessively checking on Craigslist.
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September 23, 2005
Book Booty
Oprah's book club is back. She's going back to the contemporary works format where authors come on the show to discuss their work* with Queen O and her audience. She'll be adding non-fiction writers into the mix, too. However heartening I find this news to be-- and I do find it heartening; any effort to introduce people to new books can't be a bad thing, and I'm even keener on the idea of fostering discussions about books and ideas among people largely excluded, or at least overlooked, from these kinds of exchanges-- I'm not sure the the publishing business angle that the Times took covering in the piece is the one I most cared to read about. I'm not convinced, either, that the story is important enough to necessitate cover-page placement, even if Friday is a historically light news day at papers, but, hey, it's better than front-page stories on sports. Small beans, my complaints, small beans.
What I'm really, really looking forward to is the dishy, salacious tome on the scandalous sex lives of The Frog and The Beaver, Tete-a-Tete: Simeone de Beouvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley, which Louis Menand writes about in this week's New Yorker. I love this sort of thing, love it; the scrumptious combination of tabloid sexpose and bookfest dorkfest. Sapphic affairs, threesomes, incest fantasies, harems of groupies, sexual competition, deception, seduction, Dangerous Liasons style mind-fucks. What more could a girl ask for? (Suicide, psychosis, male homosexuality and/ or murder, but, hey, I'm not complaining.)
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September 22, 2005
Good Ole' Lovable Dave Eggers, King Of Camp
"Dave Eggers can even make freedom seem cloying and precious," says Wonkette.
This prompted byGawker's note on the eBay benefit for The First Ammendment Project in which authors are auctioning off the oportunity to see your name immortalized as the name of a character, titty bar, or alien race in the author's next book. There is a little blurb by each author describing what she or he is offering. As one would expect, there is a range of generosity and thoughtfulness on display. Among the most good-spirited and enthusiastically giving are David Brin who extends a good-natured offer to let the winner choose between "the name of a rogue moon on a collision course with a doomed planet, an exotic and gruesome disease of unknown origin, or an entire species of wise, ancient extraterrestrials;" Stephen King, who is effusive in his invitation to name a character to be devoured by zombies; John Grisham's vow to use your name for a character to be "portrayed in a good light;" Karen Joy Fowler's promise to use the winning name for a secondary character in a novel; and Rick Moody's and Brad Meltzer's promises that the name will go to characters that are not throw-aways and that appear more than once. The prima donna's are more grudging in their offers: Z.Z. Packer, Amy Tan, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman promise only that the name appear "at least once;" Lemony Snickett donates but a single "utterance" off the lips of Sonny Baudelaire (although, there is something so in-character about Snickett's blurb and offer, that perhaps I should move it back to the good-natured, good-humored list); Andrew Sean Greer offers to use a part of your name on a restaurant awning; Jonathon Lethem offers to name a character in a cartoon after you (Jonny, baby, I love you, but if I was going to shell out money to have a character named after me, I'd want the character to be in one of your novels, not a comicbook. Why? Because you write really good novels and most of your fans probably love you firstly as a novelist and not as cartoonist). Well, they're still desirable offers and have fetched big wads of money.
Dave Eggers, though. Dave Eggers writes this:
The winner will be featured in a strange illustrated story I'm working on called The Journey of the Fishes Overland. The winner, or someone of her/his choosing, will be encountered by the traveling fish in question, as they travel over land. It could also be a family, a house, an address, whatever. I get to decide why the fishes see this person/place, and what's said by/to or done by/to the person/place. This story will be finished and published in the fall. The name/s have to be tasteful and be undisruptive to the narrative. I reserve the right to refuse using a name I find offensive.
As is usual with Eggers, I find myself really irritated by him without knowing exactly why. I mean, he's offering this for a very good cause , and, apparently, other people seem to find his proposition appealing as they are bidding large sums on it. I feel like a bad person for having the bad feelings about him that I have.
It's really hard to nail down what it is about Dave Eggers that really gets under my skin. I haven't read anything of his since Heartbreaking, but I rember I quite liked it back then (incedentally, I also quite liked the 'Heartbreaking Jerk of Staggering Genius' t-shirts the English Dept. gave out). He does admirable charity work for children. People whose opinions I respect seem to like him. Writers I adore and admire like him well enough to collaborate with him, or at least with his projects/ publications. You can't talk shit about him without being a petty asshat. To wit, a conversation with Nick a few weeks ago when he was in town:
Nick: . . .and I went into 826 Valencia.
Me: Hmmph. Snort. Ground Zero of the Eggers Empire.
Nick: Isn't it, like, a tutoring center for children of low-income families?
Me: Um, yeah. Yeah, it is. I know.
Nick: Aren't you into literacy skills education?
Me: Yes. Of course I am. It's just that. I don't know. Maybe it's living in San Francisco I'm just a little weary of the Eggers' cool kid club. They think they're so cool. I mean, I guess they are so cool. But I mean, they think they're so cool. I'm a little put-off by the whole cult of personality thing, especially given my impression of Eggers' personality. Also, why are all the 826s called 826? It doesn't make sense. 826 Valencia makes sense. 826 Valencia is the address of 826 Valencia. But 826 Brooklyn doesn't make sense. 826 Seattle doesn't make sense. 826 L.A., 826 Michigan, 826 Chicago. . .
Nick: Ok, ok.
Me: And how everything he touches is so, so precious.
Nick: Yeah, it's not really my style. But it seems benign. I mean, it doesn't really bother me.
Me: Maybe it's the serifs. He uses too many serifs!
Nick: I think serifs are pretty.
Me: I know. I do, too. Sigh.
Brett: Joanna, every character on your website has serifs.
See what I mean?
When I was in Seattle with Alex, we went to the Bumbershoot Festival-- not for crazy music, mind you, but to see one of our favorite stars of print and public radio, Sarah Vowell, read as part of a benefit for 826 Seattle. Vowell was astoundingly funny, Daniel Handler was sharp-witted and winning, but Dave Eggers was, well, less than luminous. During Eggers' reading, Alex played tetris on his cellphone so as to suppress his disruptive urges.
The piece Eggers read was from the perspective of a cartoon dog advising humanity to appreciate the small pleasures of life, etc. He used a voice so saccharine and affected it makes me nauseous just recalling it. Most of what he read was just dumb, not funny, and boring. A lot of writing is dumb, not funny, and boring yet does not rile me like Eggers' does. What gets my goat, in addition to affected voice, the self-satisfied smirk, is when Eggers says things like, "Dick Cheney is so evil he's cute. He is so evil he is campy and endearing." And then people laugh.
No. Please. No. Just no. Dick Cheney's evil makes him neither cute nor endearing; Dick Cheney's evil in combination with his power makes him incredeably dangerous. It makes him a harm and a threat to the world. Camp is so inapporpriate a term for Dick Cheney it makes my head spin. Camp, says Sontag, is a tender feeling, the enjoyment of what is flawed. Because it would take hours for me to write out even a marginally acceptable definition of camp, I will, instead, show by example.
Things that are camp: Pink Flamingos, Weight Watchers Cards from 1974, 1950s advertisements for washing machines, Dolly Parton, Bettie Page, The Goonies, Mary Tyler Moore, Ernest Scared Stupid, The Golden Girls, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, high-school yearbooks, baby Jesus butt plugs, Mai Tais, Barbarella, postcards of kittens playing with balls of yarn, The Village People, Arnold Shwartzenegger in Kindergarden Cop.
Things that are not camp: the Rwandan genocide, Hurricane Katrina, union busting, no-bid government contracts, Operation Rescue, cancer, Adolf Eichmann, Arnold Shwarzenegger in elected office.
I could go, but I'll spare you and get to the point. See, things that are camp have something likeable and redeeming about them, even if they are corny or flawed. They also don't kill people. So, reruns of M*A*S*H? Campy! The war in Iraq? Not Campy. RuPaul? Campy! Dick Cheney? Not campy. Really, really not campy.
I realize that Eggers probably thought he had written something charmingly campy himself. He hadn't. He had just written something crappy. And it's not that I object to making fun of serious matters. I don't object to political humor. I love Jon Stewart just as much as the next one. But Eggers isn't making a joke about Dick Cheney. Eggers is making a twee little reference to his own twee tweeness and just using Dick Cheney because, apparently, there is nothing in the world that Eggers can't use to his own self-serving psuedo-irony and cutesyness.
Whatevs, yo. Read this.
P.S. In case you needed proof that, in spite of the Snarkwatch business, Dave Eggers is the king of smarm, I give you this "favorable" review of the great Lorrie Moore's Birds of America.
Posted by hissycat at 04:20 PM | Comments (1000) | TrackBack
September 21, 2005
The Sunday Review Of Babes-- Whoops!-- Books, I Meant Books
Now I'm as excited as the next nerd to read the new Zadie Smith. I think. Anyway.
The Frank Rich review in the NYTimes Sunday Book Review was glowing and made me want to read the book. But was it really necessary for the review to devote to the two gigantic glamour shots of the, admittedly quite beautiful, author than is allotted to most book reviews? The online version shows the two headshots, but it really doesn't convey the enormous proportion of the paper was occupied by her (very pretty) face.
And I like pretty people. I like looking at pretty people. I like looking at pretty, colorful photographs. In fashion magazines. Not in literary supplements.
Incidentally, while googling up a Smith bio link for this post I came across this one.
In her midteens, she changed her name from Sadie, to Zadie, because she thought that it would make her sound more exotic, and it certainly shows that she was thinking of words and what they mean from an early age (Sadie means 'mercy' or 'princess', which is a bit girly -ed.). There aren't that many Sadie Smiths out there, if the internet is anything to go by, so she did not really have to change her name to stand out. On the other hand, if you type "Zadie" into Google, all the links are related to her, so she is the most famous Zadie in the world.
There is just so much there I just don't understand. You read it once, you think the writer contradicts himself. You read it again, you think this is a very weird and obscure way to edge in a jab about an author's careerism, celebrity and relation with fame.
Posted by hissycat at 08:55 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack