Syntax of Things

Safe & Sound & Loud as Ever

Details here.

Subterranean Homesick Baby

Elaine and I bought Marlie her first album last week, Rockabye Baby!'s Lullaby Versions of Radiohead.  She may not be old enough to tell me how much she enjoys it yet, but I can tell you that I loved it and will be adding some of the other Baby Rock Record CDs (the Pixies, Nirvana, the Beatles) to my her collection. 

The LA Times profiles the folks behind the music:

"Your favorite band's music changes your life, and most fans listen to their favorites over and over, so this is a fun way to keep listening with an interesting new twist while passing an appreciation on to their little ones," said Valerie Aiello, executive producer of the series for Silver Lake-based Baby Rock Records.

So far, nine albums have been recorded, each culling an artist's greatest hits and giving them a serene, crib-appropriate makeover. Tool, Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys, the Cure, Led Zeppelin and Nirvana are also scheduled for release before the end of the year. Smashing Pumpkins, No Doubt, the Pixies and Björk are scheduled for 2007.

That's good news for rocker parents, many of whom have attempted to play punk, rock and heavy metal for their wee ones only to be met with whines before ultimately giving in to Elmo sing-alongs and cheesy rock versions of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

"Rockabye Baby!" is the brainchild of Aiello, who, like most of the employees at Baby Rock, is younger than 35 and doesn't have kids. The idea, she said, came from listening to last year's Queens of the Stone Age album, "Lullabies to Paralyze."

Mama Always Said

"Bad Southern Lit is like Bad Southern Oysters - nothing will make you sicker when it's 'off.' Just as nothing can ever taste better than sea-salty raw oysters on the half-shell when fresh, when real."--Allan Gurganus in his introduction to the 2006 edition of New Stories from the South.

Duds

The Syntax of Things Weather Center has been put on full alert as Tropical Storm Ernesto slowly makes its northern trek toward Raleigh.  So far, Ernesto, known as Ernie in polite circles, has been quite the dud as far as tropical systems are concerned.  In fact, he has been so weak that the folks at the Hemingway home in Key West will not even name one of the inbred cats after him, an honor previously bestowed on hurricanes Charley, Ivan, and Frances.  Still, because I am a certified weather spotter whose talents have yet to be taken advantage of by the National Weather System, I will monitor the system carefully if for no other reason than the fact that I'm addicted to isobars.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I have a question for all of you.  At what point do you give up on a book?  I'm always reluctant to put one down after starting it but I do reach points when the book just isn't resonating when I ask myself this question.  For instance, I'm reading one now, a book that has been getting a lot of press for various reasons and for the most part has received positive reviews, but I'm finding that it just doesn't do anything for me.  It seems the writer is more interested in being clever than telling the damn story.  I don't mind cleverness, sometimes even relish it and want it, but for my money (and time) I need the 'writerliness' to eventually become background and the story to emerge from within that framework.  This writer is trying to do that but just when I think she's about to go somewhere with the story, I'm once again overwhelmed by the attempts at what seems to be a writer out to prove something.  Maybe it's just me.  And perhaps I bought into the hype and was expecting something more.  And there's even a good chance that this could be a situational thing where if I'd read this novel in a vacuum I might enjoy it.  Sadly, though, my time is limited, therefore I need to move on.  So why do I feel like I'm leaving a child at the side of the road?

Dodging Bullets

Being a dad is exhausting work.  Just the other day, it took me an hour to change a single diaper.  Well, change a diaper and then steam clean the floor surrounding the changing table.  Why is it that no one ever warned me of the projectile poop?  Is it because if word gets out we might see a huge dip in new births?  Disgusting as it is--and it ranks up there as one of the most disgusting and frightening things you'll ever see--it doesn't take away from the fact that I'm a very happy father who wishes he had more time in the day to do everything that he wants to do.  So expect posts in these parts to be brief for the next few days.  Trust me, I'm trying to catch up with a few things that I hope will make this type of post worthwhile, maybe as soon as next week.  And I've even been toying with a site redesign.  We'll see.  Anyway...

Ah, the three-day-novel contest.  Doesn't that sound fun?  Of course, at this point I'd be happy to be able to type up a first paragraph in seventy-two hours, but I'm sure that there are enough people out there sending in their entry fee to make this a viable contest.  The Oregonian speaks with last year's winner.  Just think, this could be you!

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James Tata has a nice rundown of New Orleans/Katrina-related items that he's posted in the year since the disaster.

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch profiles blogger Will Leitch of Deadspin fame.  I'm still trying to figure out if it was really James Frey doing Deadspin's Cleveland Browns season preview.

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Did you know that we're less than a month away from the online Chicago Manual of Style?  It's about time.  We've been hearing rumors of this for years.

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Max at The Millions is putting together a useful pronunciation guide to literary names.

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CNN offers some tips on and describes the benefits of reading to babies and pre-schoolers.  Actually, their list of things about books that appeal to babies sounds like it could apply to some adults I know:

• Open. Shut. Open. Shut. Openshut.

• Bright colors

• Cool pictures

• Cardboard's good for chewing -- not too hard, not too soft

• Books mean pleasant, rhyme-y, happy voices

• Book time is snuggle time

Stumps

Hard to believe it was a year ago that I was glued to the various news and weather outlets watching Katrina make its way toward the northern Gulf.  We all know what happened that day, but what is happening now especially in the arts community, which is essential to New Orleans both past and hopefully future, reminds me of the first sprigs of green that spurt from the ashes after a forest fire. From the Mobile Press Register:

Unlike the original, fearless settlers, we maintain the uncomfortable division in our minds -- before Katrina and after Katrina. The new literary magazine Intersection/New Orleans addresses this mental crossroads. Beautifully designed by Tom Varisco, this slim volume commemorates, in the words of its editors, "the literal intersections of the streets, as well as that of visual art and writing." Here some of our finest writers -- in episodic, anecdotal, meditative pieces -- consider the changes in a place that never seems to change, catalogue the secrets of a place it takes a while to discover and yet is never fully known.

For more information or to find out how to order a copy, go here.

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The Miami Herald's Fred Grimm takes a look at the most recent edition of New Stories from the South:

This year's edition is the 20th annual collection that could pass most years for the nation's best short stories and the first since the departure of founding editor Shannon Ravenel. Allan Gurganus, author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, and a master of the short story himself, has taken over. The quality holds, and the 2006 edition is much funnier than the 2005 version. The dark and weird abound -- hey, this is still the South -- but stories here, such as J.D. Chapman's "Amanuensis," come stoked with humor.

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Speaking of Southern writers, over five hours of video footage of Eudora Welty has been found in the archives at the NEA.  The video will be put on display at Welty's home in Jackson, Mississippi.

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Everything you ever wanted to know about the University of Missouri Press.

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The NY Times has an interesting piece on what happens when the Coen brothers invaded Marfa, Texas, to shoot their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men while at the same time Paul Thomas Anderson was around shooting their movie version of Upton Sinclair's Oil.  Mayhem ensues.

Out with the Old: Goodbye and Hello

I had to say a sad farewell to an old friend yesterday.  The 36" television that has been a part of our lives since early 2001 had to be put down.  It's been showing its age recently, making all of these strange noises that only an aging piece of electronics will make, the screen twisting and writhing in pain, the volume fluctuating between that of a scream and something close to a whisper, odd PIP boxes showing up then disappearing for no reason.  I don't think the set took to its two months of dusty idleness in the storage shed too well and had a hard time readjusting to life outside the box.  I have to say that the TV did give us five good years, and considering that I won it off a sports trivia contest, I think I got my money's worth.  Anyway, we're now the owners of a 30" flatscreen, HDTV.  I'm having to get used to the smaller size and the wider screen but I'm sure all will be fine once I do.  I may even pony up for an HD channel or two once football starts. 

Because I had to spend most of the afternoon dealing with the televisions and the evening making a mad dash to Babies 'R' Us for an important yet unmentionable item, I don't have much to offer today.  I will point out that you definitely should check out the Autumn Read This nominations at the LBC.  One of those happens to be a book I nominated.  Can you guess which one? 

{Brief aside:  I've come to the realization that my one flaw as a father so far isn't anything that I do or don't do as far as Marlie is concerned.  It's the fact that my "baby voice," the one I use when talking to Marlie or any baby, sounds too much like Lady Elaine Fairchilde from Mister Rogers Neighborhood.  You know, the odd looking woman that called everyone toots.  Hear for yourself here. Just scroll down to the August 19th post.}

Ed beat me to this and said it much better than I could have ever put it, but after reading David Foster Wallace's latest essay, the one in which he slobbers over Roger Federer, I'm worried that he's losing his touch.  With someone as talented as he is, it's worth waiting around for the next novel or even essay collection, but his latest output has been less than impressive. 

I'm looking forward to Mark Danielewski's new novel, Only Revolutions, which is being described as an "American road novel."  I can guarantee you that it won't be a novel you'll want to read while driving. {via Dogmatika}

Finally, if like me you're still waiting for Factotum to hit your local cineplex (or Netflix), you might want to check out this list of other Bukowski films.  I've seen all of the ones mentioned and I can tell you that the Italian adaptation of Tales of Ordinary Madness is bizarre.  If you want to spend a lot of time getting frustrated that there's a size limit to what you can upload to some of these video services, head over to Google Video where you can find The Bukowski Tapes split into about 300 chapters.  Worth the time if you have it.

Have a great weekend, your last before college football starts.

My Pluto Memory

I'm feeling a little down today after finding out that Pluto will no longer be considered one of the nine planets in our solar system.  For me, Pluto will always have a special place in my heart thanks to a cold, January night in Flagstaff, Arizona, when a friend of a friend who happened to have the keys to the Lowell Observatory showed me the equipment that Clyde Tombaugh used to discover Pluto in 1930.  Hard to believe that seeing such a thing would eclipse the amazement I felt after looking at the clearly visible rings of Saturn through the massive telescope or getting the private tour of the museum and observatory grounds.  I remember talking to the friend of a friend that night about Pluto's status as a planet and he seemed to have a bit of a bias or if nothing else he just wanted to protect Pluto's reputation.  He told me that the media always wanted to blow things out of proportion.  Well, it seems that the media isn't the only group doing this.  The astronomers have spoken.  Pluto, you've been demoted.  You're now a dwarf.

Around and About

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Phuong Cat Le describes a trip through the North Cascades to Desolation Peak where Kerouac spent sixty-three days as a firewatcher fifty years ago this year:

On our way up, we passed a group of Seattle high school students who were taking a day off from doing volunteer habitat restoration in the area to relive Kerouac's past. At the top, they busted out a copy of "Desolation Angels" and read from it, trying to envision what the writer might what have seen and felt.

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The outgoing writer-in-residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando tells of her three-month stay there:

I've been asked if I have ever sensed Kerouac himself in the house. Before his death in 1969, he wanted to start a writers residency, so it makes sense that he would stop by if he could. There’s certainly a positive, creative energy here. Perhaps some of that comes from Kerouac. The dedicated and enthusiastic people involved with the project bring that vibe too. But there is a playful, almost mischievous presence as well. A few small objects keep ending up in places I know I didn't leave them. (I've started keeping track to make sure.) Perhaps a more exciting answer would create some mystery, but that’s all I’ve got, which is probably a good thing. Unannounced visitors who are alive can be enough to contend with.

{via}

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Kansas City Star book editor John Mark Eberhart offers up a playlist of music he finds ideal for reading.  I'm one of those people who needs noise when I do just about anything, including sleep, so I read with music playing...the louder, the better.  Usually, it's familiar music.  I have a harder time reading to something which I've never before heard.  I tend to get distracted by the newness of it, figuring out whether or not I like the songs and if I'll ever listen to it again.  I've never thought about coming up with my ideal soundtrack for reading, but I may work on it.

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Paving the way for David Foster Wallace's move to the mainstream?  The Dallas Morning News printed a four-part series that contained "132 eye-glazing annotations."  Read it here.

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My early prediction for who will win The Quills: Stephen King.  Honestly, I'm not sure he's even nominated.  But if voting is involved, I'm sure he'll get the write-in.  Did he publish a book last year?  Ah, doesn't matter; he'll win. 

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It looks as if the U.S. isn't the only country where the anti-smoking zealots thrive.  British media regulator Ofcom has decided to edit out some scenes from the classic cartoon Tom and Jerry to keep kids from being drawn to the pleasures of nicotine.  Of course, I'm sure the use of dynamite and anvils haven't been taken into consideration.

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Here's a trailer for Fast Food Nation.

Need Motivating?

Do your own motivating here.

Today's Rant Brought to You by the Letters DMV

To all the folks at the Wake County division of the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles, I salute you.  You have managed to turn an already painful process into one of the worst examples of ineptitude I believe I have ever seen.  I'm not quite sure where to start. 

--First of all, is it necessary to make the requirements for qualification so convoluted?  I'm all for being able to prove one's identity in these days of heightened concerns about fraud and whatnot, but spell it all out in clear and concise prose.  If you say that a lease is cool, then it should be cool.  If not, tell me what kind of lease isn't cool.  Beyond that, don't tell me that it's cool at the initial check-in point and then tell me something different when I finally get to "the examiner's station."

--I'm willing to bet that most people would approve a fee increase if it meant a better examiner-to-examinee ratio.  And some sort of swing shift would be nice so that lunch and other breaks could be adequately covered.

--Another good idea:  have dedicated staff for the folks who need the road test.  If you only have five examiners working, does it make sense to pull one away to give a road test?

--Also, to the examiners, be kind.  I know you have a pretty shitty job, but you need to understand that the workflow that your bosses have set up is putting too much stress on all concerned.  Don't be snippy at the Korean guy who barely knows the alphabet when he doesn't quite understand what you mean by read the letters at the top, left to right.  And god forbid the road sign portion of that test.

--When I get my number, B137, at 10:26am, after standing in line for twenty minutes to get said number, I would appreciate having that number called before 1:22pm.  If it's going to take that long, provide snacks.  And you should have an intercom set up outside so that the nicotine-challenged in the waiting area can keep more profits pumping into your state's economy.

--Then, after my number is called, don't disappoint me by telling me that the copy of my lease which proves that I'm a legal resident of the great state of North Carolina isn't good enough, that anybody could print one of them off the Internet.  You better be glad that you agreed to let me come directly back to your station after I had to make the thirty minute drive back to get a copy of the cable bill.  Otherwise, I might be moving back to California just so that I don't have to go through this b.s. again.

--Is it really necessary to give a licensed driver from another state who has a clean driving record a written test in order for that person to get a license in your state?  Seems like overkill to me.  Is driving in North Carolina that much different than driving in, say, Kentucky?

--Saturday hours would be nice.  Then again, you can barely operate through lunch so Saturdays would probably be an even bigger nightmare.

--On a positive note, I do like the option of backgrounds for my license.  However, the lighthouse is a little too phallic. 

One of Those

Busy much?  Or is it just me?  As evidence of how far behind I am on just about everything, here's one of those memes, one that was floating around the blogs about a month ago.  I'm just now getting to it.  Sorry for the lack of links to accompany the books.  Just Google 'em if nothing else.

One book that changed your life.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly, but it would have to be Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  Not only did it open up the world of reading and writing to a very young, small-town Southern boy but it also made me want to strike out on my own once I could, to rediscover America in my own terms, and to smoke a lot of, er, cigarettes while I was out there.  Thanks to that book and the numerous ones that followed as a result of my reading it, I realized that the Bible wasn't the only place a person could go to for advice on salvation and redemption.

One book that you’ve read more than once.

I'll steer away from the obvious with this answer and tell you the one book that I once read every year for about a decade straight:  Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.  Don't know why, but the book always put me in the mood to write.  Probably been about six or seven years since I've read it, so I might need to dig it back out and see if it still works.  Assuming, of course, that it ever did.

One book you’d want on a desert island.

I think I would be happy with any of the Norton Anthologies.  Though they tend to be a bit WASPy, there's still so much there worthy of being read numerous times and I'm not sure I'd be too concerned about the PCness of the canon if I'm stranded on a desert island. 

One book that made you laugh.

Without a doubt George Singleton's The Half-Mammals of Dixie.  I dare you to read "Richard Petty Accepts National Book Award" during a church service. 

One book that made you cry.

DFW's Infinite Jest made me cry so many times I quit counting.  I even cried when I finally finished it, after about a half-dozen attempts.  But I'm guessing this is asking about a different sort of crying.  I'd say that the last book I remember making me tear up because of the story itself was Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin.  Such a beautiful and heartbreaking book.  How could you not cry?

One book that you wish had been written.

I wish that Larry Brown would have been given the time to finish the last novel he was working on before he died.  His wife said that if it weren't for the fact that he'd lost several drafts after attempting writing on a computer for the first time, he easily would have finished it before his death.  Damn computers.  Truly a shame.

One book that you wish had never been written.

I'm going to have to take the chickenbleep route with this one.  I'd hate to say that I despise any one book enough to say that it never should have been written.  Sure, there's Jane Eyre and Middlemarch, but what would I do without books that almost led me to want to poke my reading eyes out as an undergraduate.  Just as I say about Madonna, without her there would be less for me to bitch and moan about.  So those books that I don't like need to be around.  Make sense?

One book you’re currently reading.

I'm just finishing Cormac McCarthy's forthcoming novel, The Road.  It's amazing even by McCarthy's standards.  I'll have more to say about it later.  I was telling Dan Wickett earlier that I received the ARC of this book just before Marlie was born and almost asked her to hold on a few days so that I could read it.  Ah well, it was worth the wait.

One book you’ve been meaning to read.

The book that has been weighing down (literally) my TBR pile for months is Vollmann's Europe Central. 

I Blogged It Back When

Sometimes the most interesting things can cause traffic on one's site to explode.  Today, everyone seems to be searching out info on Aaron Durley, the 13-year-old Little League baseball player from Saudi Arabia who stands a full six feet, eight inches tall and weighs 256 pounds.  He's 13!  Anyway, because I'm addicted to the Little League World Series--have been for years now--I actually mentioned him last year.  I guess it takes the media a little while to catch on, huh?

Monday Morning Things

If for some reason you can buy only  one book the rest of the year, make sure it's Tom Franklin's Smonk, which hits shelves this week.  Dandy Dan Wickett points out that Entertainment Weekly has reviewed the novel, giving it an A-.  And apparently, the title character, E.O. Smonk, one of the more disturbing characters you'll ever run across in a book, has his own MySpace page.  If you've read the novel, this revelation found in an interview with Franklin in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is a little unsettling:

While Franklin didn't tone down his writing, he did pare it. For every bloodied paragraph in "Smonk" there were two he cut from the final draft.

That's hard to imagine.  Anyway, stay tuned for a Syntax of Things review in the next few days.

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Speaking of south Alabama writers, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reviews Sonny Brewer's new novel, A Sound Like Thunder.

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Ahead of the publication of his forthcoming book, Time profiles Jonathan Franzen:

The new, less fearful Franzen is a less tightly wound Franzen. After The Corrections, he got cable and developed what he calls "a Law & Order problem of significant dimensions." He stopped hunching his shoulders. He took up bird watching. "I spent whole days doing that, which would have been inconceivable, first 20 years out of college," he says. "To do something just for fun, for a whole day, on a weekday? That was totally new." Although based in Manhattan, he and his girlfriend spend part of the summer near San Jose, Calif. Basically, he's happy for the first time in his life. He has even made a truce with his old nemesis: next month O magazine will run a two-page spread on The Discomfort Zone. "I'm not sure all is forgiven." He thinks about it and chuckles. "But maybe it is."

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Australia's The Age discusses the adaptation of Raymond Carver's stories into film:

Carver liked to keep a quote from Ezra Pound by his desk and his work comes from that strain of American modernism, not just Hemingway but Pound and William Carlos Williams (whose poems were a strong influence on Carver's), which emphasised the crisp, the severe, the imagistic, all those things that can, after all, be photographed. And what people do is to use the stories as resources, as suggestions, to expand on rather than cut back as is the way with literary adaptations, which after all tend to be of novels rather than of short fiction.

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The Mobile Press Register's Thomas Uskali takes a look at the amazing Virginia Quarterly Review.

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I'm sure that more than a few people are wondering if Matt Dillon will struggle with his career after his role as Hank Chinaski in Factotum much in the same way that Mickey Rourke did after Barfly.  But where Rourke seemed to get in to his role a little too much, enough so that he actually impressed Bukowski during the filming, Dillon appears to have kept his research of the role to past experiences:

"I heard that Richard Burton -- he drank all the time -- said the only time he didn't drink was when he played a drunk. That was the case with me; I never drank on the job." Then Dillon calls a halt to where this conversation is leading -- his drinking proclivities. "I'm only kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he animatedly repeats, smiling. "I'm not like Hank. What I mean is I have enough experience that I don't need to go out and do that to get into the character."

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The LA Times discusses something I've struggled with as a reader for most of my reading life: the notion of "warping time":

For author and critic Wendy Lesser, editor of the Threepenny Review literary magazine, the best manipulations of time are the ones you don't see. "If it jumps out at you, then it is disturbing," Lesser said. "You begin to think that's the point of the story."

Writers rarely play well with time, she said, "except for science fiction, which warps time on purpose and is supposed to be noticed," whereas filmmakers have better success. "In a movie it is purported to be real people standing in front of you, but of course they can't be," Lesser said. "There is a suspension of disbelief. With novels, there is no pretense that someone is standing in front of you …. You're engaged with the imaginative act, and you can give it full credence if the author doesn't give it tricky things."

Vollmann Alert

The Independent's Matt Thorne recently interviewed William T. Vollmann by phone.  Of the many things that caught my attention was this quote:

He's currently working on a number of new projects. One is a non-fiction book about his experiences hopping freight trains across America. "It's really fun to think about the connections with the Beats, rereading Jack Kerouac, but also Jack London and Mark Twain, travelling fast through the country, that solitary, wild American experience."

Sad News, Too Sad

Just the other night, I remembered an IM conversation I had with a fellow blogger and a manager of a team in my fantasy baseball league.  It was a very late April night, one of my first in Raleigh, and  the Braves and Giants were playing out on the Left Coast.  Still early enough in the baseball season and my clock not yet adjusted to Eastern time, I was wide awake and for some reason I decided to click on AIM, something I rarely if ever do.  Mike happened to be online so we spent most of the rest of the game chatting about baseball and books and music, but mostly baseball, and he made it clear that he was going to kick my ass in this year's league.  Before signing off, we made a promise to "watch" more games together over IM.  Well, as life would have it, I've been far too busy to live up to my end of the bargain, so when I remembered it the other night, I checked to see if he was there.  No luck.

In fact, I'll never get the chance. It turns out that Mike passed away earlier this week.  I don't know how our paths crossed to begin with. I think he once told me that he found Syntax of Things through Gwenda's site.  Through numerous email exchanges we both found that we had a lot in common.  We kept in touch over the two years or so since he first left a comment at SoT, and he participated in my last two fantasy baseball leagues.  Recently, he'd started working on a damn good baseball blog alongside his book and pop culture blog, Little Toy Robot.  And his team is currently in third place in the league, a full thirteen games ahead of my Stubby Clappers.  In other words, he's kicking my ass.

I'd like to send out my warm regards and deep sympathies to Mike's family and friends.  Even though I never met him in person, from what I gather from his online persona he seemed like a really great guy and I know that my fantasy league, both this year's and the years to come, will never be the same.

More info can be found here, here, and here.

I Almost Forgot Someone's Birthday

So I'm a day late.  I was too busy thinking about Elvis.

Everything New Is Beat Again

I suppose it should be mentioned here that fashion inspired by the Beats is making a sort of comeback.  Of course, the fact that I'm the least fashionable person this side of the Appalachians means that I could care less.  Still, some folks enjoy getting dressed:

Beat’s outer trappings — black turtlenecks, cigarette pants, neckerchiefs, berets — is indebted less to Jack Kerouac and his wayward cohort, who slouched about in frayed flannel shirts, than to stylized interpretations in movies like “Funny Face” or the less well-known “Subterraneans,’’ a 1960 film based on a Kerouac novel about the kinky denizens of North Beach in San Francisco.

But beat style owes at least as much to the French model, which to some minds is more studied and, well, more chic. “The beatniks were basically a media creation that revolved around the existentialists of the Paris Left Bank,’’ said Andrew Bolton, the associate curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum. “Its dark, streamlined aesthetic became the visual interpretation of a basically nihilistic philosophy.’’

I love the fact that there's a Costume Institute and a guy there talking about the streamlined aesthetic of the beatniks.  How chic.

Various

The Atlantic takes a look back at some of the advice contributors like Wallace Stegner, Francine Prose, and John Kenneth Galbraith have given to aspiring writers. 

So when you pick up a book by Joe Schmo, do you care if the person who wrote the book is actually named Joe Schmo or not?  This Boston Globe article looks at what they see as a growing trend in publishing: writers changing their names in order to overcome a poor track record as far as previous sales go.

Look at what's happening in Brooklyn on September 16th:

The president of Brooklyn, Marty Markowitz, is throwing a party at Borough Hall on September 16. Guests will include Jonathan Safran Foer and his wife, Nicole Krauss, who moved to Park Slope last summer; Jonathan Lethem, who was born many years ago in Boerum Hill, and Jhumpa Lahiri, Rick Moody, and Colson Whitehead, who all live in Brooklyn. The list goes on and the shelves fill up. A lot of them have written articles for the New Yorker, and visitors to the Tea Lounge have probably witnessed them in the act without even knowing it.

Louisiana's Laura Plantation, famous as the site where the Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit stories were first written, will reopen in October, two years after a fire destroyed the top floors of the main house.

You should check out the most recent edition of Ed's Literary Hipster's Handbook.

Some of Me

I've contributed a Contributor's Note post to the growing collection of other Contributors' Notes over at the Litblog Co-op.  This is all in conjunction with the discussion of this quarter's Read This! selection, Michael Martone by Michael Martone.  I'm looking forward to Martone's reaction to all of this.  He'll be stopping by the LBC tomorrow if we haven't scared him off by now.

Long Suffering

Newsday details the sophomore slump that seems to affect writers of successful first books:

The "sophomore jinx," as the second-novel phenomenon is also called, often seems to boil down to a fear that the public will want the same novel a second time, says Asya Muchnick, the Little, Brown editor who works with Parkhurst, Fitch and Alice Sebold, author of the 2002 "The Lovely Bones." Sebold, says Muchnick, is working on her second novel.

"The media and the public get excited about a breakout first novel," she says, and second books often don't win the same attention or sales. But that's still better than a flop the first time: "Name recognition certainly helps with buyers. It can never be a bad thing to have your first book succeed."

There's an interesting debate going on in England over what should make up the required reading lists for school kids, and unlike here in the States, the debate isn't over whether or not the book has sexual overtones or gay themes or whatever else bugs an overly paranoid mother in Kansas but whether or not it can be certified as a classic, as in did a dead white male write it.  While I'm in favor of kids getting a nice helping of the tried and true, I think that in the U.S. there should be more of an emphasis on the huge need to generate more interest in reading in general, and I tend to agree with Stephen Moss' commentary in The Guardian that too much of a canon diet can spoil the appetite. Here's Moss:

Why do teenagers need to read the "classics"? What on earth do they make of Henry James, whose late novels should be read at a funereal pace? James said this was essential. "Take, meanwhile, pray, The Ambassadors very easily and gently," he told a friend. "Read five pages a day - be even as deliberate as that - but don't break the thread. The thread is really stretched quite scientifically tight. Keep along with it step by step - and then the full charm will come out." Sometimes you read James and think you are going mad, so complex is the prose and intricate the thought: this is literature to be interrogated, not read. It is madness to instruct teenagers to read it, and will probably put them off reading for life. Certainly off James.

Speaking of the Brits, the Booker longlist has been announced.  I've read one of the books, David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, which is one more than what I've usually read when the list comes out.  Bully for me.

I don't know if you saw this last week, so I'm giving it to you today:  Links to 23 Penn and Teller: Bullshit episodes.  Goodbye productive day.

I'm feeling downright depressed right now.  First, I hear that astronomers want to demote Pluto to the minors, now there's word that hot dogs might cause genetic mutations.  Damn this world.  Damn it to Hades.

Finally, if you need a laugh as much as I do, here's some YouTube magic: Mr. T on Ibsen. {via}

A Dose of the Absurd with a Sprinkle of the Normal

There's no way you can convince me that George Bush actually read Albert Camus's The Stranger during one of his many recent vacations.  In fact, I'm thinking that it is all a misunderstanding.  Bear with me on this as I explain my theory. Reporter asks White House spokesman Tony Snow what Bush will be reading during his vacay.  Snow, knowing Bush ain't much of a reader but not wanting to admit this said that the president is busy with The Outsiders.  Reporter thinks that Snow is referring to The Outsider, also known as The Stranger, by Camus, when in fact he is referring to The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.  And to make matters worse yet more believable, the Prez isn't reading the Hinton book; he's watching the movie.  Pony Boy, indeed.  Now tell me, which version of this do you believe?

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The LA Times has more on Starbuck's plans to be booksellers.  According to the report, Starbies called Hyperion asking for the Mitch Albom book.

"We didn't pitch them, they came to us because they were interested in working with Mitch's book," [Hyperion President Bob] Miller said. "They had gone out looking for all kinds of publishers, looking at different kinds of books, and then this one really grabbed them."

It didn't hurt, of course, that Hyperion had previously published Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's book of business advice, "Pour Your Heart Into It." "We have some relationship there," Miller conceded. "And I know that Howard has been a big fan of Mitch's books. It all came together pretty quickly."

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The Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times profiles the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College:

The faculty has included Pulitzer Prize winners such as novelist Richard Russo, who wrote “Empire Falls,” and Jane Smiley, author of “A Thousand Acres.” Pulitzers have also gone to Warren Wilson poets Carl Dennis, Stephen Dunn and Louise Gluck, who also served as the U.S. Poet Laureate. Novelist Andrea Barrett, author of “Ship Fever,” has received the National Book Award.

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The inevitable fallout from Guenter Grass's admission that he belonged to Hitler's Waffen SS has begun.  Among others and with many to follow, Lech Walesa demanded that Grass give up his honorary citizenship to Gdansk, his birthplace. "If it had been known he was in the SS, he never would have been given the honor."

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The Arkansas Democrat Gazette profiles Sidney Thompson and Jennifer Paddock, two talented writers who live in Point Clear, Alabama, and who happen to be married.

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Baseball needs more nutjobs like Ryan Freel:

You've seen it, certainly, the diving, fully extended, back-to-the-infield backhand grab of Albert Pujols' line drive into the gap Tuesday. Epic. Simply epic. But so were Freel's comments after he'd had time to see the replay a few times.

Freel said the play was beyond belief even for somebody named “Farney.” You know you have to ask.

“He's a little guy who lives in my head who talks to me and I talk to him,” Freel said the day after the play. “That little midget in my head said, 'That was a great catch, Ryan,' I said, 'Hey, Farney, I don't know if that was you who really caught that ball, but that was pretty good if it was.'"

Tom Waits on the Mike Douglas Show, 1976

Rest in peace, Mr. Douglas.

Mammoth Perils of Southern Living

I'm completely out of it today.  Just for fun, try and guess what is photographed above.

Answer hidden here (highlight with your mouse to reveal):  I don't know exactly what type of moth, but it's a big one.  And it landed on our porch the other night, providing me a good fifteen minutes of photo-taking fun.  Click on the photo for the full-size version.

We Report, You Decide

Syntax of Things roving correspondent George Kaplan made the trek to Durham's Regulator Bookshop to see Marisha Pessl in person.  He filed this report:

So I went to the first ever (as I understand it) Marisha Pessl bookstore appearance last night. Mostly full house. My impressions, all superficial, but it is called an "author appearance" and I have few book-related opinions at this point.

Yes, she's blinding, maybe more so than the author photo - in person, small part Molly Parker and bigger part 70s Marisa Berenson but 27 and friendly and maybe giggly-nervous.  Tight low-rise jeans and small blouse showing some distracting (for me) all-star waist skin, plus a spectacular array of ice on her ring finger that does nothing to dispel any Barnard stereotypes.  There's definitely an air of life-in-rarefied-air, like I've sensed with Susan Minot or Joyce Maynard in person, but I get the idea this woman pumps her own gas.  She may not be the girl-next-door, but she's far from the Galaxy Craze freakshow. Women who I'd normally expect to hate someone like her out of the gate seem to like her regardless.

She reads like an actor (as one would expect), maybe with a hint of poetry-voice.  She says she wrote two bad novels in college before this one. Spoke with some phrases that make my eyes roll (even when idols resort to them), like "I had a hard time leaving my characters behind" and writes the overly cute (to me) third-person author bio, but it sounds more like hype-related disorientation and maybe a lack of jading and I expect it to sputter as she deals with 3 years of publishing-related bullshit and passes age 30.

I liked what she read and I like her drawings. I'll try and read Special Topics in Calamity Physics after I finish, coincidentally, Austerlitz.  She mentioned the drawings came late in the process and were done in, I believe, 2 weeks or less.  As the book apparently references so many visual aids, the agent or editor thought it prudent to actually include some.  Apparently, however, it's provoking a little head-scratching in regards to the audio version.

I remember one simile/metaphor, although I don't have the passage handy--something about a woman moving/walking RKO-like.  My first thought was "cool!".  Second thought was "maybe that's a little pop-y and could end up being dated."  Third thought was "How dated can an RKO reference be if I understand it in 2006?"

I wish her well--I think she appreciates the apparently not-undeserving lottery she's won.  I'd hope to be able to handle a first/early appearance so well.

Plus, I, as George Kaplan, like that she has a cat named Hitchcock (and one named Fellini).

Word on the street is that she/Calamity are the NYBTR cover this weekend. You heard it here. If it's not, that's what you get for reading blogs.

See also:
+ Jessa Crispin: It's Not About Marisha Pessl's Looks and Money—is it?

+ NYT review of Special Topics in Calamity Physics {Note to self: Read reviews before posting a link to them; see Mark's and Ed's reaction to this one.  Yesh.}