I have discovered these past few days that there are two types of people: those who like daylight saving time, and those who do not. The folks who like daylight saving are like me. They are optimists who look forward to a long summer of sun-drenched evenings, where you can spend the evening hours outside in the warm, lingering dusk. Those who don’t like daylight saving moan about losing a single hour on one weekend of a year of weekends. These people’s lives are mercilessly scheduled, and they apparently find no way to derive joy from the extra daylight, they instead cling to that lost hour as an example of the many ills that befall them. I don’t like those people.
Daylight saving
Chicago Bound
I’m heading to Chicago this afternoon to scope the place out. This summer, after Miss Millions and I get hitched, we’re moving to Chicago where I’ll be attending the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. Chicago will be a big change for us… the weather alone is a little daunting, but I’m excited about getting to know a new city, and I will do my best to keep The Millions going while I’m in school. In fact, one of the things that keeps the Millions going is the great book stores in LA where I can keep track of the latest books and even meet authors from time to time. I happened upon Golden Rule Jones, which will keep me informed of readings and other literary events, but I need to find a good book store that can be my home base in Chicago, preferably somewhere on the North side of the city, since that’s where we’ll be living. So, I probably won’t be blogging for the next few days, but I will be checking back here. I’m hoping that those of you with knowledge of Chicago will leave some bookstore recommendations in the comments area so that I can check them out. Thanks guys!
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New Yorker Wraps Up 2008 with Austere Fiction Issue
As has been the tradition for the last several years, The New Yorker closed out 2008 with a fiction double issue. But astute readers may have noticed that this year’s installment was markedly slimmer than that of years’ past.Perhaps it is common knowledge, but I was surprised to discover a few years back that it is not the amount of “news” that principally determines the length of individual issues of newspapers and magazines. The length is actually determined by the amount of advertising that’s been sold. This is why, for example, issues of dot-com-focused Wired magazine were nearly as fat as phone books at the turn of the millennium but slimmed down considerably soon after.The New Yorker is one of the enduring success stories of magazine publishing and is generally able to command attractive advertising rates only dreamed of at other publications, thanks to its affluent and “thought-leading” mix of subscribers, but even The New Yorker may be feeling the ad spending pinch that is impacting the entire media industry right now.This year, the year-end fiction double issue came in at 120 pages. That’s noticeably smaller than the 154 pages in 2007 and 2006 and the 152 pages in 2005.The New Yorker has been exempt from the barrage of negative headlines about the news business, but in 2009, readers used to a hefty helping of long-form journalism and fiction may find themselves with a slimmer serving each week.
New York Times News
A while back I discussed the minor furor over proposed changes at the New York Times Book Review, including charges of dumbing down and sensationalism. Now the helm has been handed over to a new editor, Sam Tanenhaus, a widely published journalist and the author of a well received biography of Whitaker Chambers. It remains to be seen if the New York Times Book Review will change significantly. On another, much more visible front, the Jayson Blair affair has reemerged due to the release of the book in which he tells his side of the story, Burning Down My Masters’ House: My Life at the New York Times. It is hard to imagine that anyone will take seriously a book by someone whose claim to fame is his astounding lack of credibility. In fact, the venomous pans are already rolling in (Dallas Star Telegram, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Even the Brits get into the act.) My favorite, though, is this headline from the Christian Science Monitor: “Jayson Blair: ‘I lied.’ Reader: ‘No kidding.’” I’m rather happy to see the level of outrage that Blair’s book is generating. Meanwhile some are reporting that the Times stands to benefit if Blair’s book does well (LINK). I’m not sure if that story has legs, though.
Dumas Lost and Found
A literary mystery reached its conclusion about two years ago when a lost Alexandre Dumas novel was published in French. The Last Cavalier had been discovered by a scholar in the Bibliotheque nationale de France as researched Dumas’ life. The book has now made it here in translation. The New Yorker covers the book in its “Briefly Noted” section, calling it “a breathless seven hundred and fifty pages,” which is certainly an apt description of the one Dumas book I’ve ever read, The Count of Monte Cristo.The CS Monitor raves as well and offers some specifics on how the novel was found in serialized form and how it was turned into a novel, “in much the same fashion Dumas himself did when transforming other epic serials into bound novels.”
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Appearing Elsewhere
I stopped by the Vroman’s Bookstore blog today to answer some questions about teaching creative writing. On Tuesday, June 3rd, I begin teaching a 6-week beginning fiction class for their Vroman’s Ed program.Also, if you have a teenager, you might consider signing him or her up for my summer fiction writing class for high school students, which begins Tuesday, June 24th. If you are a teenager, and you’re reading this blog, well, you rock and I want you in my class!
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Litblogs come in many flavors
I’ve been a little out of loop lately, but today I picked up a copy the Chicago Reader, having noticed that it was their “Spring Books Special.” Among the many reviews and briefs is an entertaining article called “So This is the Blog Revolution” by Laura Demanski AKA OGIC. It’s a short history of the litblog phenomenon and an attempt to gauge its importance (unfortunately the article is not available online). As both a reviewer and blogger, Demanski understands that part of the draw of such blogs is to watch as non-professionals turn book criticism into a conversation and review the reviewers. The tendency of litblogs to critique mainstream book coverage directly (eg. the Brownie watch, The LATBR Thumbnail, etc.) has no doubt raised their visibility. What better way to get noticed by journalists and reviewers than to repeat their names incessantly? Everyone gets a thrill out of Googling themselves. In terms of elbowing its way into mainstream book coverage, it may be that the LBC will represent the pinnacle of the litblog movement.I love my fellow litblogs dearly, and I have enjoyed watching the community grow. But I also think that one can keep a blog about books that does not exist to be the David to the New York Times’ Goliath, and, no, I’m not going to deliver The Believer’s anti-snark manifesto here. There is a certain joy that is derived from reading a good book and discussing that book with a fellow reader. Having a blog has allowed me to direct this inward act outward. My blog is essentially a reading journal, and my reading journal exists to interact with other readers (and with their reading journals, if they have them). Although many of my fellow members in the LBC have garnered a certain amount of fame by holding mainstream book coverage to a high standard, I am relieved that the LBC seems to arise from a different sort of urge. I look at the LBC as twenty readers getting together to recommend to you a book that they hope you’ll enjoy.(Mark your calendars, LBC selection #1 is just 6 days away).
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Je est un autre: David Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud in New York
Wojnarowicz was deeply aware of the trajectory he shared with the youthful and precocious Rimbaud.
Welcome to the Working Week 2: Emre
[Editor’s note: This week we’ve invited Megan Hustad, author of How to Be Useful: A Beginner’s Guide to Not Hating Work, to dissect our contributors’ first-job follies.]Emre writes:The joyous Sunday nights at college became my biggest tormentors upon joining the ranks of working people in New York. I’d get the blues every Sunday around 9 p.m., and in an effort to stave off Monday would stay up really late – usually drinking and watching TV.One such Sunday, I was so preoccupied with reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections that I did not even leave my bed the whole day – except, of course, to hit the toilet, get more coffee, make Bloody Marys and nibble on some cheese. The whole day passed and before I realized it, the book was finished, it was 4:30 a.m. on Monday, and I was thoroughly exhausted and depressed by the outcome. I called my boss, left a semi-drunk, highly strung-out message saying something along the lines of, “Dear Boss, it’s 4:30 in the morning, I cannot sleep and am terribly depressed. If I come to work tomorrow, I might go crazy. I am taking a mental-health day,” and hung up.When I went to work on Tuesday everyone seemed very concerned about my well being. My boss said it was totally OK to take mental-health days as I saw fit. And I thought, “it worked!” Or did it?Megan Hustad responds:I’m going to say yes, it did. Probably. But only because on an average day you were pretty reliable and conscientious. (If you remembered to call in with your regrets at 4:30 a.m., drunk, yes, I’m guessing “conscientious” applies.)You ever notice how some people like to arrive at the office a little late, say, fifteen to thirty minutes late, but every single day? And then there are those who are already stationed, pouring their second cup of coffee, always at 8:55? The first group, often, tends to think they’re getting away with something. (Or that being blasé about hauling ass to work in the morning is akin to joining the Wobblies. Subversive!) But truth is, making a habit of fudging procedure generally backfires. (There are brilliant exceptions, but…takes too long to explain here.) When the boom comes down, it comes down hard, and the chronically late types find themselves nitpicked and chastised for minor infractions. Seemingly more buttoned-down types, however, get to deviate wildly from norm on occasion, take huge allowances, or commit major indiscretions, and — more often than not — get away with it.Oh, and it’s not only that mental-health days are sometimes necessary. Here’s a line from John Wareham’s 1980 Secrets of a Corporate Headhunter: “Sometimes fail to arrive at all: your absence can be the talisman of your presence.” A perfect attendance record won’t get you the corner office, he argued, and if you’re also seen at every last party, you should probably make a point of not showing up once in a while. (In other words, don’t be all Eva Longoria and get dressed for every “hey, there’s a new Treo model, we’re rolling out the red carpet!!!” event to which you’re invited.) I like this advice. Uselessness rating: 2For more information, please see these related posts:Welcome to the Working Week: Megan Hustad Analyzes Our On-the-Job FoiblesWelcome to the Working Week 1: MaxWelcome to the Working Week 3: GarthWelcome to the Working Week 4: Andrew
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