Via Rake’s Progress I found this oldish but greatish Michael Chabon essay introducing an issue of McSweeney’s that was devoted to plot-driven short stories–“thrilling tales” (no, I don’t pay as much attention to McSweeney’s as I probably should). Chabon writes:

As late as about 1950, if I referred to “short fiction,” I might have been talking about any one of the following kinds of stories: the ghost story; the horror story; the detective story; the story of suspense, terror, fantasy or the macabre; the sea, adventure, spy, war or historical story; the romance story. Stories, in other words, with plots. A glance at any dusty paperback anthology of classic tales proves the truth of this assertion, but more startling will be the names of the authors of these ripping yarns: Poe, Balzac, Wharton, James, Conrad, Graves, Maugham, Faulkner, Twain, Cheever, Coppard. Heavyweights all, some considered among the giants of Modernism, source of the moment-of-truth story that, like homo sapiens, appeared relatively late on the scene but has worked very quickly to wipe out all its rivals.

Chabon even has a good word to say about Stephen King! His weariness of literary lit meshes with some recent link-rich postings by Michael Blowhard about books and the book biz, here and here. I always find Michael’s cheerful pragmatism about book publishing smart and refreshing, his omnivorous reading habits emulation-inspiring. I thought of him, actually, when I read Terry’s great Orson Welles almanac the other day–words I am going to tape to my brain.

In semi-related news, Sean Rocha over at Slate tells why 23 different books could claim to be top-ten best-sellers last week, and why no one can say for sure whose claims are legit:

The reason for all this secrecy is itself the worst-kept secret in the literary world: Hardly anyone buys books. Hyping a book as a “national best seller” creates an illusion of momentum and critical consensus that the phrase “over 25,000 copies sold”–which would actually be a pretty good figure for literary fiction sales in hardcover–does not. Thus, the industry’s modesty is protected by the fig leaf of relative sales: The current No. 1 on every fiction list is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, but there’s no way to tell from the ranking whether it is selling 1,000 copies a week or 1 million.

I’ll be leaving for Washington later today, and I’m looking forward to the train ride. Too much time spent at my desk or in theater seats, too much concentration, too much art, not enough unscheduled drifting. I shall take no computer, no work, nothing but my eyes and ears and a drowsy, slightly worn-out disposition, all in the hopes of being freshened up by the time I reach my seat at the Kennedy Center tonight.

You’ll hear from me again on Friday. In the meantime, OGIC will tend your blog-related needs.

Later.

“Try not to regret the past too much. Most often, the past drops away from you because it’s ripe.”

Colette, letter to Germaine Patat (undated)

One of ALN‘s correspondents writes to expand on my thoughts about 1999 all-star cinema (it’s practically the seedlet of a theory now–we may need to call for reinforcements) and to defend Sexy Beast:

I remember there was a moment–probably when Marky Mark calls his wife on his satellite phone from the Iraqi bunker [in Three Kings], or maybe it was in The Limey or The Insider or Fight Club–when I felt like movies had changed, that the artists had figured out the new machines & everything would be different from then on. Turns out that’s not really the case, but it was a great year. The one on that list that keeps getting better for me is Topsy-Turvy, which has climbed into the all-time pantheon.

What is about ‘9 years and the movies? ’89 was similarly remarkable, or at least felt so at the time (Do the Right Thing, sex, lies, and videotape, Drugstore Cowboy, Heathers…), and then there’s the legendary ’39. No time to do the research on the others right now…

I did think Sexy Beast was the best movie of whatever year it came out (it was a slow year) but I think that’s 90% based on the good will generated by the opening scene–it didn’t so much lead to disappointment in the rest of the movie as an undercurrent of strangeness that, along with Kingsley, kept the rest of the movie afloat (at least the first time around–I’ve not been back yet).

Yep, Topsy-Turvy is the cream of that crop. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen it but for the one time, when it slew me. Terry, too–I was there to see. But Bridget Jones’s Diary was on cable the other day, reminding me that I always mean to rout around more thoroughly in the ouevre of Shirley Henderson (has anyone seen Wonderland?) and to watch Mark Darcy’s better half in action about a few hundred more times before I die.

Everybody and their brother has linked today to Ron Rosenbaum’s giddy preview of Philip Roth’s new novel, to be published in the fall (first seen by me at Ed’s joint). The Plot Against America is an “alternative-future novel in which Charles Lindbergh, in real life the figurehead for the isolationist and (in part) pro-fascist America First movement, runs for President in 1940, beats F.D.R. and–soon after his inauguration–makes a pact with Hitler.”

So how’s the book? Nice but ultimately meaningless, if we’re to trust Rosenbaum’s analogy:

It was the night of that Lakers-Pistons overtime game. I mention this because as soon as I got home with the Roth galley, I proceeded to read all 390 pages straight through the night, with only one interruption: watching that amazing last-quarter Lakers comeback, capped by Kobe Bryant’s stunning game-tying, buzzer-beating three-point shot. It’s not like Roth has to make a comeback or Kobe has something to prove (wait, that’s not completely true), but there’s at least a surface analogy there: Both the game and the reading experience were, in some primal way, unbearably suspenseful….

What is the “Plot Against America”? I ain’t tellin’, but it gets freaky toward the end and scary throughout: There was just no way I was going to get to sleep without finishing the book. I hope the serious-minded literati among you will forgive me for dwelling on the confluence of the Kobe Bryant shot and the Roth novel, but the Kobe shot had something of a similar quality, a jaw-dropping last-quarter gamble that pays off and leaves you astonished. A long rainbow arc. Nothing but net.

Lead time’s a bitch.

UPDATE: Rosenbaum’s piece prompts Sarah, who must have been an English teacher’s dream–or a bad English teacher’s nightmare–to reminisce about her checkered history with Roth’s work and to consider giving him a second chance. Go read her tale of precociousness!

“If there’s no pleasure for me in it, I feel no obligation to a work of art. I cherish certain paintings, books, and films for the pleasure of their company. When I get no pleasure from an author, I feel no duty to consult him. My interests are pretty wide; and I do keep trying to stretch them wider. But no strain.”

Orson Welles (quoted in Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles)

I’m in The Wall Street Journal today–a special unscheduled appearance on the Leisure & Arts page.

Last week, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is in charge of rebuilding the World Trade Center site, announced the names of the four cultural organizations it has offered space at Ground Zero: the Joyce Theater, the Signature Theater Company, the Drawing Center, and an as-yet-nonexistent “Freedom Center” that will present “exhibitions centered on humankind’s enduring quest for freedom.”

I wasn’t exactly impressed, least of all with the Freedom Center:

The Freedom Center is one of those self-evidently silly ideas that only an underemployed committee could have conceived, a portentous-sounding Museum of Nothing in Particular destined to present blandly institutional, scrupulously noncontroversial exhibitions. No doubt the center will draw plenty of squirming grade-school kids sentenced to compulsory field trips, but I’d bet next month’s rent that tourists will steer clear.

The three other groups to be offered space are serious and respectable, but they simply don’t add up to anything remotely approaching a world-class center for the arts. “The vibrant mixture of dance, theatre and fine arts in one cultural complex will serve as a powerful cultural and economic engine for Lower Manhattan,” Gov. George Pataki proclaimed last week. Who’s he kidding? Like the Freedom Center, this particular choice of institutions stinks of committeethink. It’s modest and safe–the inverse of the magnificent cultural opportunity afforded by the coming reconstruction of Ground Zero….

I was especially disappointed in the fact that New York City Opera, which had proposed to build a three-theater complex at Ground Zero, got the brush-off. I wrote in the Journal last year wholeheartedly endorsing City Opera’s proposal as the kind of large-scale project worthy of the site and the occasion. Alas, the LMDC apparently thought it too major–and, I’m disturbed to say, too highbrow:

“By building a New York City Opera House on the ashes of the World Trade Center,” I wrote, “New Yorkers would be making the boldest possible declaration of faith in the power and glory of Western culture. A year and a half ago, 3,000 innocent men, women and children were murdered by sworn enemies of that culture. I can’t imagine a more inspiring way to honor their memory.” Instead, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. chose to think small–very, very small….

Read the whole thing here.

I was gratified to see that Terry has revised and downgraded his opinion of the clownish mob film Sexy Beast. I caught this on dvd a year or so after everybody else swooned over it at the theater. Neither I nor my friend could understand what the fuss was about, or even stay awake, really. Sexy Beast is notable, though, for containing perhaps the most precipitous drop from brilliance to banality in recent cinema history. This thanks to its opening scene, a monster of a set-up and a visual joke for the ages. All by itself this scene is almost worth the long slog that follows. The rest of the first half of the movie is then diverting enough, but only thanks to an outstanding Ben Kingsley, as Terry notes. The second half, following his character’s departure, I just can’t recall. Sexy Beast ranks up there with Memento as one of the movies whose enthusiastic following among the apparently like-minded most baffles me.

More recently I watched the haunted house flick and Nicole Kidman vehicle The Others on cable. (If you don’t want to know how it ends, now is the time for you to stop reading and turn back.) I liked this movie much better when it was called The Sixth Sense. Also when it was a book called “The Turn of the Screw.” And that pretty much covers its sources. My disappointment at the derivative ending was closely followed by the even more deflating realization that this movie will probably be only the first of many inferior permutations/rip-offs of M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, which will then be blamed for what it spawned, like Mies van der Rohe. Sigh.

Speaking of The Sixth Sense, it’s still amazing to remember what a great year for U.S. films 1999 was. I can rattle off a top ten that shames any year since:

Three Kings

Topsy-Turvy

The Insider

Election

The Limey

Magnolia

The Sixth Sense

The Winslow Boy

Being John Malkovich

Guinevere

Okay, so maybe a couple of these haven’t worn so spectacularly well. I’m thinking mainly of Being John Malkovich, but even that I’d still watch for Catherine Keener’s acute angles and cutting edges.