Gossip

Ah, time for another week of the best gossip your hard-earned blog-reading dollars can buy.  After all, we're pretty sure that's all we're good for these days: gossip.  Might be the only thing litbloggers are good for in general.  Some people seem to think so.  God forbid that anyone who reads our blogs should ever go out and buy a book based on a review or recommendation, and you should probably wait a few weeks for the mainstream outlets to pick up on something that you might see first on a litblog, because the mainstream is so much more reliable and timely.  And you should spend some of the money that you waste on the litblogs buying the paper and ink highbrows because they're doing such an amazing job helping to carry on the great literary tradition of building ivory towers.

Anyway, I have plenty of gossip and I hope you find it to your liking.  There will probably be more just like it tomorrow.  And the day after...:

The San Francisco Chronicle has a great piece on SoT favorite Lawrence Ferlinghetti's military service during World War II.

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I'm not sure anyone could be fully prepared for the mental image that Allen Ginsberg friend and biographer Bill Morgan gave to a class at the University of Pittsburgh, so brace yourself:  "His bathtub was in his kitchen (of his East Village apartment) and he thought nothing of sitting there nude in the tub or walking around naked in front of guests."  The rest of the article isn't nearly as daunting...I promise.

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The Feds are investigating patient care at The Oregon State Hospital, a place made famous by Ken Kesey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

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The Boston Globe talks to Henry Louis Gates Jr. about The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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This weekend, Why Melville Matters, a three-day trans-disciplinary celebration, will be held in Albany, NY.

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I'm pretty sure you've never seen a Pynchon novel compared to a toaster.  Until now:

At 3 lbs. 6 oz., Against the Day weighs just 3 oz. less than my toaster. But my toaster doesn't offer the tantalizing music of Pynchon's voice, with its shifts from comic shtick to heartbroken threnody, its mordant Faulkneresque interludes, its gusts of lyric melancholy blown in by way of F. Scott Fitzgerald, its ecstatic perorations from Jack Kerouac. And my toaster will never lay before me a vision of a world in which technology is stripping away all the ancient, vital magic while shepherding mankind to the brink of destruction. On the other hand, my toaster makes toast, and nothing quite so graspable ever pops out of this predictably bewitching, predictably bewildering book.

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Bat Segundo has been on a roll lately and his (its?) latest batch of interviews are just great.  Be sure and take the time to listen to the Mark Danielewski one, where you'll hear the following:  "I don’t think I’m an experimental writer."

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Speaking of Bats, David Lynch, who is batshit crazy, wants us to check out his new movie, Inland Empire, and to spread the word, he and a live cow sat on the corner of Hollywood and La Brea (youtube link).  In my opinion, you can't have the Inland Empire without cows, lots of them, and their smells.  So maybe he's not so crazy.  Never mind.  He is.

Comments

[Steve Clackson]

I saw that Lynch clip the other day and was going to link to it but didn't know where to go with it. "Bat shit crazy" yup thats it.

[Darby]

Speaking of gossip, my best friend's cousin's girlfriend was at this party a couple weeks ago where she made out with this waiter who had once served drinks to Ryan Phillipe, and he said (the waiter not Ryan) that he used to date a guy who used to date this girl whose mom's niece's nephew's uncle's cousin went out with a guy who went out with a girl who totally went to this party once, and she saw Keith Gessen there, and she said, Keith Gessen? Sort of a moron. And his shoes didn't match his belt.

[Pete]

Books I've read as a direct result of litblogs, and subsequently loved:

Jonathan Coe, Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
Ander Monson, Other Electricities
Stephen Elliott, Happy Baby
Ward Just, An Unfinished Season
Irene Zabytko, When Luba Leaves Home

And this doesn't even include the many wonderful books which, by virtue of having my own litblog, the authors or publishers sent to me, books which I wouldn't have read otherwise. So, yes, litblogs do add value to my reading experience.

[Sam]

I like N+1 but there are some things I don't get about the interview. For example, how do some blogs "drown out" other blogs? Kind of reminds me people who say there's too much information in the Internet.

And this quote:

"It's one thing to be corrupted by, say, the pressure of writing for the New York Times Book Review, or the prospect of employment somewhere, or a blurb. But to sell your birthright for a couple of review copies and a link on a blogroll!"

I'm reminded of the old joke that ends with the punchline: "We've already established that. Now we're just dickering over price."