Archives for 2003

Jessa Crispin at Bookslut helpfully provides a link to this recent interview with the outrageously talented young writer Adam Johnson. His short story collection from last year, Emporium, is a book I just can’t shut up about. I have not yet gotten my hands on his new novel Parasites Like Us, and have not read much about it.

As far as splashy fiction debuts, last summer sometimes seemed to be the summer of Adams: Johnson and Haslett. It was easy to get them confused at first, but soon this one was grabbing most of the attention, topped off with a National Book Award nomination. I liked Adam Haslett’s stories, but the media fuss seemed misplaced. To my mind there is something just a little showy, and less than fully felt, about the stories in You Are Not a Stranger Here. They’re inventive, diverse and impeccably crafted, beyond any argument. But–and I know this is a highly subjective criterion–to me Haslett’s stories feel decisively less urgent, less necessary. They may be too diverse; as a group they feel oddly professional in their intent, like a portfolio of work samples designed to demonstrate mastery of a range of modes and subjects.

I think Lost in Translation is going to be a touchstone for all of my thinking about art and storytelling for a while. What it has in common with the amazing stories in Emporium, and what distinguishes them from Haslett’s fine, but finally sterile, performance in You Are Not a Stranger Here, is hard to put your finger on precisely. It’s in the vicinity of conviction or purpose–whatever all that lovely craft is serving. Encountering Coppola and Johnson’s work, I experienced something very like what Terry described here.

The UK Observer has posted its selection of the 100 greatest novels ever.

Of course there’s much to disagree with (Roald Dahl? Atonement?). It’s in the nature of these exercises to be pretty rote in the early going (chronologically) and somewhat scattershot toward the end. But my biggest quarrel is that this list comes bubble-wrapped in enough caveats and preemptive defensive gestures to very nearly take all of the fun out of the proceedings. If you’re going to do something bold like make a canon, do it boldly, please.

Last week, literary blogger Maud Newton wondered aloud whether Lost in Translation was really as good as its press and word-of-mouth suggested. I finally made it to the movie last night [aside: according to the terms of our deal, Terry, you are now bound to see School of Rock, and, we hope, report back here!] and can give Maud my two cents: yes, at least that good.

It’s deft and gorgeous. I can’t remember ever being so ravished and heartened by a story of, essentially, renunciation. Most of the reviewers I’d read emphasized the film’s delicacy, subtlety, understatement–and these are in fact its defining qualities. But this characterization led me to expect a sort of charming, airy souffl

I never noticed before today that my thesaurus, Roget’s International, includes definition-quotations from famous writers for certain words, like “love” and “memory.” Some of the bundlings of quotations read like miniature epigrammatic debates.

This example tells a tart little history of the fortunes of the word it explicates:

TASTE, TASTEFULNESS

“good sense delicately put in force”–Ch

When I was waiting to see Lost in Translation last night, there were plenty of new trailers. This meant a perfect chance to play the thumb game. It’s simple: the moment a trailer ends, each participant votes thumbs-up or thumbs-down, Siskel-and-Ebert-style. There are two rules: your verdict must be instantaneous (in demanding a snap decision, this game shares in the spirit of “In the Bag”), and, most crucially, there is no middle ground. Period. A horizontal or flickering thumb is grounds for no popcorn. And that’s about it; there’s no winning or losing, just the need to publicly commit to a judgment before sussing out what everyone else you’re with thinks, and live with the consequences.

The trouble is, these days even trailers for good movies are pretty reliably awful, so anyone voting thumbs-up for anything risks having to absorb a lot of abuse and condescension for the rest of the evening. Depending on how tough the crowd is, and how honest, it can make things more interesting to require each player to vote thumbs-up at least once or twice, no matter how dismal the offerings.

Drastic measures weren’t necessary last night, though, since there were a couple of advertised films that actually looked pretty good. Here’s my scorecard:

In America: New Jim Sheridan looks faintly autobiographical, but seemingly centers not on Irish starving-artist

Among other things with which I just caught up was this posting from an anonymous blogger who seems to be suggesting (if I read him right) that OGIC and I are members in good standing of the Cool Lit Club:

Hi. Did you read a lot of books in high school, but secretly thought bullies were kinda cool? Did you enjoy watching them pummel the kids who thought they were being original, when really, they were just being stupid and annoying with their “different” dress and “underground” music? Are you now in your 20s? Fancy yourself a writer? I mean, a real writer, not those arty, navel-gazing fags who only write about their lives? Well, hey, blogging’s for you!…

Links. Oh god, this may be THE most important aspect of your blog. You must have an extensive links list. But not just any links list. You must have a CLC-approved links list. A small sample of cool links would include: Gawker; Neal Pollack; The Minor Fall, The Major Lift; Maud Newton; Moby Lives; Book Slut; The Old Hag; Moorish Girl; The Literary Saloon; About Last Night; Boing Boing; Number One Hit Song; etc….

Membership in the CLC is all about how much a—— you can chow down. Shamelessly lick the cornhole of The Minor Fall, The Major Lift. Shamelessly. Once you’ve pounded that stinky butthole down, move on to Gawker and then Maud Newton. Even though the CLC is all about criticism and snark, never EVER criticize them. They are above criticism…. praise them. Endlessly. Worship them. Pat them all on the back, even though most of what they say is not witty, clever, or even observant. That is not the point. The point is that they’re cool. And you want to be cool, don’t you?

The part I like is about how I’m in my 20s. As for OGIC, she’s the cool one around here.

“This age makes me so sick that sometimes I am almost impelled to stop at a corner and start calling down curses from Heaven.”

George Orwell, letter to Brenda Salkeld, 1934

I’m in New York for the night, en route from Washington to St. Louis, and I’m severely underslept, so I doubt I’ll be posting anything substantial until Wednesday. This is just to say that I miss the old blog–that’s why I put so much stuff up on Thursday night–and that I promise to make up for lost time with a vengeance once I get back.

I haven’t had my iBook with me (and won’t be taking it to St. Louis, either), and hence was astonished to see how widely my posting on middlebrow culture
was picked up in the blogosphere. Those in the know will recognize it as a snippet from the introduction to A Terry Teachout Reader, the collection of my greatest hits that I just finished indexing. Did I mention that it’ll be out from Yale University Press in April? I did? Several times? Well, in the immortal words of Truman Capote, a boy must peddle his book.

What have I done since you saw me last? I saw Mystic River in Washington and Golda’s Balcony in New York, and will have something to say about both in this space at some point subsequent to my return on Wednesday. I reread the first volume of Gary Giddins’ Bing Crosby biography, about which I will also be thinking out loud. I made notes for other things I want to write, here and elsewhere (including some fresh Top Fives). What I didn’t do was catch up with the blogmail–that’ll have to wait until Thursday and Friday. But as you know, I always answer everything sooner or later, even the dear-sir-you-cir e-mail (of which I don’t get much, believe it or not).

No “In the Bag,” either. I just haven’t got the steam. I have dark circles all around my eyes tonight! So I’ll leave you in the elegantly manicured hands of Our Girl in Chicago for now. I’ll seeeeeee you again….