Syntax of Things

Giant

“I want to say something lofty about myself, like, ‘I deal in emotional realism!’. But that makes me want to throw up, so I will say that I consider Awesome a work of grim realism marketed toward people who might identify with lonely giants.”--Jack Pendarvis on his awesomely strange new novel Awesome, which I highly recommend.

Kerouac Surfing

Here's the latest in Jack Kerouac name appropriation:  The Kerouac Sidewalk Surfer.

They also come in a handsome black.  And only $55.  No word on what the dog who chews these to the exact designer specifications is getting paid.

Living Proof

I knew it:

Based on some intriguing preliminary studies in animals, J. Timothy Lightfoot, a kinesiologist, and his team at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, suggest that genetics may indeed predispose some of us to sloth. Using mice specially bred and selected according to their activity levels, Lightfoot identified 20 different genomic locations that work in tandem to influence their activity levels — specifically, how far the animals will run. Lightfoot's team is the first to identify these genetic areas and the first to figure out that they function in concert. The researchers say the areas they found on the mouse genome may have analogs in humans, and the UNC team is now gearing up to conduct a similar study in men and women. "We have put forward a fairly complete genomic map of the areas that are associated with regulation of physical activity," says Lightfoot, whose study is published in the current issue of the Journal of Heredity.

Atlas

Apologies for the lack of anything substantive on my part lately.  Here at the Salt & Pepper Mine, our Fiscal Year ends on Thursday so I've been throat deep in Excel and Access for the last few weeks making sure that all the coins have been counted.  Hopefully I can free myself from all Microsoft products long enough next week to list some of the books that have crossed my desk of late.  Until then, here's one I hope will cross my desk soon (and thanks to Jo for pointing it out):

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America

Edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey. Ecco, $29.95 (608p) ISBN 978-0-06-147090-5

Without leaving home or spending a cent on gas, readers of this book can enjoy a scenic view of the entire U.S. that is as familiar as it is disorienting. Weiland, deputy editor of the Paris Review, and Wilsey, editor-at-large for McSweeney's, have gathered a group of 50 disparate voices to explore not just their experience in America, but the way each state was presented in the American Guide series of the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, in which the Works Project Administration (WPA), as part of F.D.R's New Deal, put more than 6000 American writers to work creating a portrait of this country. The editors wanted “to make a book inspired by the ideals behind the WPA Guides” but they also wanted “something more personal, more eccentric, and more partial.” Obvious heavy-hitters—Dave Eggars (Illinois), Rick Moody (Connecticut), Jhumpa Lahiri (Rhode Island), Barry Hannah (Mississippi), William T. Vollmann (California)—are included, as well as some wonderful surprises. Alison Bechdel's illustrated story about her life after moving to Vermont brilliantly combines personal history with historical fact, as does Charles Bock's essay on growing up and working in his parent's Las Vegas pawnshop. Mohammed Naseehu Ali's tale of life in Michigan, after moving there from Ghana as a teen, illuminates what the “unconditionally generous” Michigan nature shares with the traditions of his own Hausa-Islamic culture. And Franzen's imaginary “interview” with the state of New York is perhaps the high point among this collection of beguiling summations of something all the writers share: a love-hate relationship with how their chosen state has changed and evolved during the course of their lives. (Sept.)

In case you're wondering, after the cut is a list of states and the writers who will be writing about them:

High Lonesome

PopMatters profiles musician/writer Willy Vlautin, whose new novel Northline is at the top of my TBR pile:

“I was a big fan of Paul Kelly, the legendary Australian singer and songwriter, at that time; his new album, So Much Water So Close to Home, had just been released. I used to sit around and listen to that record over and over again.”

One track in particular rendered the fledgling writer and musician spellbound. Paul Kelly’s “Everything’s Turning to White” is a musical reinvention of Carver’s 1977 short story “So Much Water So Close to Home”, a grim first-person narrative centered on four fishing buddies who discover the nude corpse of a young woman floating facedown in the Naches River. The callous disregard that the four friends display in reaction to their gruesome discovery – “decent men, family men who take care of their jobs”, Carver writes – sends the narrator into a harrowing emotional tailspin.

A careful reading of the album liner notes revealed the source material for Kelly’s song, compelling Vlautin to rush out to the nearest bookstore and buy a copy of Where I’m Calling From. He devoured the book immediately. Carver’s lean and minimalist approach to prose and poetry, coupled with the brutal narrative candor of a punishing and unforgiving God, provoked a visceral response.

“Carver is the first writer who made sense to me,” says Vlautin, whose own prose and story-driven lyrics are deservedly compared to Carver’s. “The pieces didn’t even seem like stories, they seemed like a guy bleeding on the page in the middle of a nervous breakdown. The person writing it could have been my boss or a mechanic or my mom’s boyfriend. The stories weren’t intimidating, they weren’t using words or situations I was unfamiliar with. It was like I was looking into lives I knew something about. I didn’t even notice the artistry behind Carver’s work because I was just floored by the heart and the guts right there on the page. It really changed my life.”

NPR Waits

For those of us too broke (or cheap) to pay the high price to see Tom Waits on tour here in the U.S., NPR is giving us a chance to stream his July 5th show from Atlanta's Fox Theater beginning tonight at midnight.  And it's free.  More details here.

Roster

In the New York Times, Adam Van Doren, grandson of poet Mark Van Doren, writes about discovering a ledger that belonged to his grandfather which contained the names of the students that Van Doren taught during his time at Columbia:

There were hundreds of names. I recognized many: Allen Ginsberg, Jack (or as my grandfather wrote, John) Kerouac, Lionel Trilling, Thomas Merton, Herman Wouk, Clifton Fadiman, Arthur Sulzberger, Louis Simpson, Whittaker Chambers, John Hollander, Richard Howard, Robert Giroux, Robert A. M. Stern, Jacques Barzun, Robert Lax. The list went on and on, and what a list!

What I had in my hands was a singular piece of history, a collection of men (Columbia didn’t admit women at that time) who had helped shape the American literary canon for a better part of the 20th century. They had all studied under Mark Van Doren, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, literary editor of The Nation and legendary professor (though he would never have approved of that adjective).

[...]

Mark Van Doren believed that young people were intuitively capable of grasping even the most complex literature. After all, as he wrote in his autobiography, any student, by the time he has turned 18, has already experienced the deepest emotions of any Shakespeare play: he has fallen in love and been heartbroken, felt jealous, murderous and vengeful. Dostoyevsky and Sophocles have nothing over him in this respect.

The professor kept corresponding with these college youths years later, suggesting career paths, critiquing their manuscripts, promoting their work — even writing poems about them. “Death of a Monk (T. M.)” was written shortly after Merton’s death. He contacted publishers about promising students, encouraging Kerouac to publish “The Town and the City.” Kerouac quit the football team after getting an A in “Shakespeare.” (It should be noted that though the ledgers show my grandfather was a tough grader, those who would go on to make a literary impression on the world also did so in his classroom.)

Comboland

I'm going to see Raleigh's legendary The Connells tomorrow night, opening for the Old 97s in a free downtown Raleigh event.  I was never a big fan of The Connells back in their heyday; in fact, truth be known, I couldn't stand them.  But now that I'm here living in their hometown, it seems fitting to give them another chance, so I've been listening to a few of their albums of late.  I still don't like them but at least they don't cause my ears to bleed quite as much as they once did.

Anyway, while Googling around, I found this Old Grey Whistle Test segment on the Raleigh music scene, circa 1985.      

Gas Station Coffee, Without the Gas

I think I've had a cup of Sheetz coffee before.  It was cold and they were out of anything but the flavored creamers.  That's why I took to calling it Shitzy coffee.  But Sheetz, which is basically a truck stop for the suburbs, is getting in on this whole "coffee without the coffeehouse" thing that McDonalds seems to be keen on pushing.  Not to be outdone by a burger joint, Sheetz has been doing a promotion in which loyal Sheetzheads submit their poems for a chance to win $5000 in hot, steaming Sheetz (or cold if that's the way you like it).  The contest is over, but now you can all see just what kind of poets roam the gas stations near you.  And you can vote for who should be the Sheetz laureate here.

Paid Poet

Ever wondered what it's like being the Poet Laureate of the United States?  Time gives you an idea:

Patricia Gray, the head of the Library's Poetry and Literature Center, describes the laureateship as an "iconic" position. It is the highest honor for a poet in this country — bestowed by the Librarian of Congress, who consults with former laureates, the current laureate, and poetry critics in making his choice. It is the only government office for a literary artist that is not federally funded. It is an academic-year position (October to May), but poets may extend their term if they choose. The perks include a $35,000 stipend, a $5,000 travel allowance, cultural cachet and a swanky office at the Library of Congress — aptly called the Poetry Room, replete with furniture from the English Edwardian and American Colonial Revival periods and a view of the Capitol.

From this exalted perch, the poet laureate is charged with bringing poetry to the forefront of the American consciousness, as well as playing consultant to the Library of Congress — which includes giving a reading at the beginning of the term and a lecture or reading at end of term, organizing monthly readings and overseeing the Library's poetry fellowships and prizes. And, of course, he or she should continue to write poems.

Sounds simple enough. Still, many laureates have found the demands of the position overwhelming. In his forthcoming memoir, Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry, Donald Hall, who served from 2006 to 2007, sums it up in one sentence: "And the whole laureate year elapsed in a blur of activity."

The current laureate, Charles Simic, says he was often too busy to talk to his cat. He kept expecting the rush to die down, but it never did. "It's endless interviews," he says. "The position is so well known that sooner or later every newspaper and magazine in the country gets in touch with you."

Hunter S. 360

It slipped my mind last Friday while sitting in the Triangle's first screening of the new Hunter S. documentary Gonzo that it was the good Doctor's birthday.  Of course, it was fitting that I would be spending an afternoon, alone save one other fellow, in a theater watching a movie that celebrated both his life and death.  I have mixed feelings about the documentary.  It does a good job of revealing the character, and by that I mean the persona, but it doesn't really peel away what must have been some pretty thick layers, doesn't aim to get at what made the man what he became.  There was very little discussion about his childhood or of his decline, and too much going back to the utterly annoying Johnny Deppness of Thompson's life.  But it was worth the time, if for no other reason than it got me out of the non-air conditioned house for a couple of hours.

Toward the end, I kept wondering what would Hunter S.'s reaction to this campaign be and whether or not he (the persona, not the writer) would even make it in today's political (and publishing) climate, both questions The Boston Phoenix's Mike Miliard takes on in this column:

In case you weren’t aware, Thompson was a man with many bad habits — not least when it came to his work routine. It may have been true, once upon a time, that “he was a tireless round-the-clock worker; no lead was too small to follow up, drunk or sober,” as Thompson’s partner in crime, illustrator Ralph Steadman, writes in his memoir, The Joke’s Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me (Harvest, recently out in paperback).

It’s also true, Thompson confessed, that “I am not an easy person to work with, in terms of deadlines.” During the ’72 campaign, he marveled at other reporters filing stories daily, with ease. For him, each two-week deadline was an ordeal: “There is hardly a paragraph in this jangled saga that wasn’t produced in a last-minute, teeth-grinding frenzy,” he wrote in Campaign Trail ’72 — “the bloody product of fifty-five consecutive hours of sleepless, foodless, high-speed editing.”

While the lucrative Gonzo brand may have been incentive for some editors to deal with his act back then, it’s hard to imagine many today who’d put up with a similarly inclined young writer.

That’s to say nothing of his other habits. Can you imagine, say, Anderson Cooper climbing aboard the Straight Talk Express, dragging a half-drunk six-pack as his carry-on luggage? Would the Globe outfit one of its political reporters’ expensed motel rooms — acquiescing to an aversion to office cubicles — with “two cases of Mexican beer, four quarts of gin, a dozen grapefruits, and enough speed to alter the outcome of six Super Bowls,” as Thompson alleges Rolling Stone provided in ’72? These days, you can’t even smoke cigarettes inside.

More to the point, which political reporter today can you imagine staying as an overnight guest of someone like Carter, as Thompson did, talking into the night about the Allman Brothers and stock-car racing? Or sharing a limousine with Nixon, talking football, just the two of them? (“I don’t know,” Thompson deadpanned in a 2003 interview. “I don’t think Bush would want to talk to me.”)

Canandian Boom

I'm glad to know that libraries--at least in Canada--are booming, but this article seems to imply that the biggest reason for this boom is the fact that people are no longer afraid to read what they want, no matter the quality of the book (and thank goodness they've overcome their irrational notion that books are a "highbrow literary pursuit"); however, it ignores the fact that folks may just cutting out book buying from their budgets and instead get their reading fix for free at the library:

"Everyone thinks the Internet has been the death of the public libraries and exactly the opposite is true," says Grant Kaiser, director of marketing and development for Calgary Public Library. "We see more and more and more readership every year."

When Kaiser started at the library eight years ago, it was circulating 10 million items annually. Now, 14.5 million items go out the doors each year, the 2.5-million-item collection is kept fresh by adding a new book every six minutes, and 70 per cent of Calgary households have a library card, he says. Plans call for three new branches to be built and two others expanded in the next 10 years, Kaiser says.

"We've seen a dramatic increase in the number of people reading, despite what all of the numbers and that seem to say," he says.

Books used to be viewed as a highbrow literary pursuit that obliged readers to seek out hidden gems and choke down ponderous classics even if they didn't enjoy them, he says. That snobbery has now evaporated and people feel free to read whatever pleases them, transforming libraries into purveyors of blockbusters just like movie theatres, Kaiser says.

"People want to read what Oprah recommends, they want to read what are on bestseller lists, they want to read what TV shows and celebrities promote," he says. "I look at it as literature becoming mainstream."

Kaiser credits a growing trend toward applying marketing principles to books, whether on the part of publishing companies, savvy librarians or websites where people can rate books and sing the praises of their favourites.

Frey Quote

Nothing James Frey says surprises me anymore, but he has a new collaborative book/photo project coming out and as always seems to be the case when he's promoting something new, well, he steps in it:

"I'm much more part of the art world than I am the literary world," Frey said before the duo's Thursday night talk at Manhattan's Strand Bookstore. "I wanted to make a cool, sort of radical, fun art book. I have no interest in being called a memoirist. I'm a writer."

Does anyone call him a memoirist anymore?  But, surprisingly, there's more:

"The idea was just to do a cool book that would piss people off," Frey said. "People who appreciate what Terry [Richardson] and I do would love it and people who don't, would hate it." So, what's next for the pair of provocateurs?

"I'm working on another book and a TV project," Frey said. "The book's about a 32-year old secular Jew in New York who comes to believe he's the messiah."

Proper

From The Rut:

[Much thanks to good pal Kay for sending this along.]

Where Have You Gone, Leo Tolstoy?

Over at the Britannica Blog, Clay Shirkey has an interesting reply to Nicholas Carr's much discussed "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?"  Basically, Shirkey claims that the Internet has hastened the demise of not reading itself, but a certain type of reading and culture:

But the anxiety at the heart of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” doesn’t actually seem to be about thinking, or even reading, but culture.

Despite the sweep of the title, it’s focused on a very particular kind of reading, literary reading, as a metonym for a whole way of life. You can see this in Carr’s polling of “literary types,” in his quoting of Wolf and the playwright Richard Foreman, and in the reference to War and Peace, the only work mentioned by name. Now War and Peace isn’t just any piece of writing, of course; it is one of the longest novels in the canon, and symbolizes the height of literary ambition and of readerly devotion.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just Carr’s friend, and it’s not just because of the web—no one reads War and Peace. It’s too long, and not so interesting.

This observation is no less sacrilegious for being true. The reading public has increasingly decided that Tolstoy’s sacred work isn’t actually worth the time it takes to read it, but that process started long before the internet became mainstream. Much of the current concern about the internet, in fact, is a misdirected complaint about television, which displaced books as the essential medium by the 1970s.

As a consolation prize, though, litterateurs were allowed to retain their cultural status. Even as television came to dominate culture, we continued to  reassure one another that War and Peace or À La Recherche du Temps Perdu were Very Important in some vague way.  (This tension has produced an entire literature about the value of reading Proust that is now more widely read than Proust’s actual oeuvre.)

And now the internet has brought reading back as an activity. As Carr notes, “we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice.”  Well, yes.  But because the return of reading has not brought about the return of the cultural icons we’d been emptily praising all these years, the enormity of the historical shift away from literary culture is now becoming clear.

And this, I think, is the real anxiety behind the essay: having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the idea of reading War and Peace.

Plagued

In the Dallas Morning News, publisher Jonathan Karp discusses the problems plaguing the publishing industry and offers five options for overcoming these problems:

1. Add more titles to augment sales.

But no one knows whether the books will sell! When a new project is acquired, we base our sales projections on the way similar books have performed in the marketplace – an assumption based fundamentally in blind hope. Often, these financial projections turn out to be more fictional than the novels we publish.

2. Sell more copies of existing authors and titles. A worthwhile endeavor, but also a difficult one in a retail environment that is essentially flat.

3. Ask popular authors to "increase output." Which can result in twice as many of those ingenious serial-killer books per year.

4. Diversify your "product line." Which is why there are six new diet books and presidential biographies every season: Publishers are engaged in an endless war for market share in the same limited categories, even though there's little demand for new books in many of them.

5. Cut costs, pray to the gods of movie tie-in paperback editions, or hope that one of your authors gets his or her own talk show.

Given those pressures, I understand why a conscientious publisher would choose the first option – to add titles fast and hope to catch some cultural wave. Think of Hannah Montana, Obama-mania, entrepreneurial self-promoters with a brand to build or political provocateurs such as Jonah Goldberg, whose pointless thought exercise Liberal Fascism is just the latest example of what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once termed "boob bait for the bubbas."

Busted

Friday and the air conditioner has been dead for two days.  Luckily I have my experience of proper fan placement learned from all those years spent in non-ac'd apartments in San Diego.  But the key is to keep all activity, including blogging, to a minimum.  After all, blogging is physically demanding.  I'm starting to sweat just typing this.

To escape this heat, I hope to take in Gonzo tonight in an air-conditioned movie theater, but I definitely won't have the same experience with the documentary that Will Leitch of Deadspin had.  Here is Leitch on meeting Hunter S. Thompson:

I’d like to say he was a fevered, inspirational dervish to the both of us, but that’s not true. Mostly, he just seemed like a sad old man, stuck in a role he invented for himself but would never be able to escape. It was depressing, even for a 24-year-old who hadn’t done shit, to see an American journalistic titan reduced to asking two stranger kids –- children, really –- to relive his great moments for him, moments that were long, long gone. When we left that night, driving to Las Vegas straight, we broke our slackjawed silence only to mock him, to vow that would never happen to us.

Watching “Gonzo” last night, seeing those last days, when Hunter was trapped playing the part of “Hunter,” typing out limp retreads of his blistering early work, I was struck with how much we were the problem. Not just us. All those who met with the Good Doctor to tell their friends about it, to share Crazy Hunter Thompson stories. All those editors who let him get away with anything, especially toward the end, when there was nothing on the page but a legend trampling on himself, because that was all he had left to do.

And yet, as the movie points out, he had one last great piece in him. His piece for ESPN, after September 11, pretty much nails every single world event that was going to happen over the next seven years, events he would blissfully miss out on. At the time, when I read that column, I hated it. I didn’t want to hear about wars and rantings and warblings; I just wanted to drink and hit my head against things. But he was right. It still feels a little bit like Hunter. Even if ESPN was just letting him do whatever he wanted, because, Christ, Hunter S. Thompson is writing for us. Even with assholes like us, dropping by, trying to live off the old man for a while, get a story they can tell people in a blog seven years later, feel cool. We were all making it worse. We were making the old man dance for us. And he did.

Nobody Cares

I don't know who sent me this information about this new literary journal open for submissions.  I don't know who will be judging the submissions.  And I'll probably never know who submitted.  But I like the idea.

Poet Laurewho?

I have to admit that I've never heard of Kay Ryan who has been named our nation's Poet Laureate.  The challenge for the rest of the day will be trying to remember whom she replaces.

If you'd like to get to know our new PL, here's a Christian Science Monitor profile of Ryan from 2004.  The NY Times has a few of her poems for the reading.

Two

She ended her second year with a wasp sting on the forehead, which in some cultures I'm sure is a sign of good fortune.  She'll begin her third year with some barefoot piano playing and a lot of cake.

The wasps have been eliminated.

Bye Bat

July has been a hell of month and it's only the 15th.  So many deaths and demises it seems.  I'll miss this one for sure.  Of course, if there's one thing we can all be certain of, it's the uncertain certainty of an Ed Champion farewell.  Return reluctantly or not, just return when and if you're ready, Mr. Segundo.

OA Giveaway II

Going to be a slow week around these parts as the SoT family prepares for the wee one's second birthday.  So in the spirit of gift giving, I have an extra copy of the latest issue of The Oxford American, the "Best of the South" issue, which includes a must-see DVD (trailer above).  If you want a copy, shoot me an email with your mailing address and tell me your favorite Southern food.  The email that makes me the hungriest will get the issue.

Tough Decisions

Back tomorrow once I'm fully recovered from the road trip to Stone Mountain, Georgia, the return part of which included six solid hours of heavy rain and the witnessing of a Georgia sheriff deputy hydroplane off the interstate as he sped by us to investigate a wreck up ahead.  But despite the stress of white knuckling for that amount of time, I did find one brief moment of bliss, a take away from a stop to fill up with gas in an out-of-the-way town in Somewhereville, South Carolina.  Witness the above which was part of an advertisement above the gas pump.  Too bad for the "or" because I can't imagine having to choose.

Here's a Poem and Here's a Cat

We've paid the ransom and we're getting the kid back today, but we have to drive down to Atlanta to fetch her.  Before I go, here's a little Buk home video to get you ready for the weekend.

Bookwormer

A group of researchers in Toronto have just released results of a study showing that "bookworms have exceptionally strong people skills."  This comes as news to those of us bookworms who pretty much can't stand people.  I kid.

Their years of research - summed up in the current issue of New Scientist magazine - has shown readers of narrative fiction scored higher on tests of empathy and social acumen than those who read non-fiction texts. And follow-up research showed that reading fiction may help fine-tune these skills: People assigned to read a New Yorker short story did better on social reasoning tests than those who read an essay from the same magazine.

Those benefits, researchers say, may be because fiction acts as a type of simulator. Reading about make-believe people having make-believe adventures or whirlwind romances may actually help people navigate those trials in real life.

"Fiction is really about how to get around in the social world, which is not as easy as one might think," said Keith Oatley, one of the researchers and a professor in the department of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto. "People who read fiction give themselves quite a bit of practice in understanding that. And also, I think reading fiction sort of prompts one to think about these questions - you know, what are these people up to?"

         

I must be reading the wrong fiction.