Joel Stein of the LA Times is bravely calling the wrath of legions of Harry Potter fans down upon himself, but I can’t say that I agree with what he’s trying to say. First there’s the headline: “Hogwarts fans, you’re stupid, stupid, stupid.” Not mincing any words there. Stein is apparently infuriated that so many adults are excited about the upcoming Harry Potter book. “Next Saturday, when the sixth Harry Potter book comes out, at the very least I want you to stammer excuses when I see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on your nightstand. I want you to claim you’re reading it to make sure it’s OK for your kids, or your future kids, or even, if you have to, for kids in general,” he writes. He goes on to bash adults who enjoy C.S. Lewis, E.B. White and J.R.R. Tolkien (“Isn’t it a clue that you should be ashamed of reading these books past puberty when the adults who write them are hiding their first names?”) and Finding Nemo. Stein’s grating tone aside, there are two points I’d like to make: First, some of the best books and movies we have were written for kids (or kids AND adults). It must be sad to go through life avoiding “kid stuff” because you don’t deem it to be intellectually up to par. Secondly, what do you think all these adults who are reading Harry Potter will read instead? It will be Dan Brown and James Patterson on their nightstands, if they read at all. Is that really so much better? I say that if people are reading it’s a good thing for the book industry and for our culture – even if it is just a kids’ book.
The Grinch who Hates Harry Potter
Oprah picks a real memoir
Still in the throes of controversy surrounding James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, Oprah has selected Elie Wiesel's memoir Night as the next selection for her book club. While this selection was no doubt in the works long before the Frey controversy, the juxtaposition is still remarkable. Frey's confessional, sensationalized addiction memoir, the credibility of which seems to crumble further with every passing day, looks awfully silly next to the beloved memoir of a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor whose character is unassailable as far as I know. In the New York Times, Wiesel says he hasn't read Frey's book (big surprise), but then goes on to make some comments that seem to me to be directed at Frey's fast and loose treatment of the truth (emphasis mine):He acknowledged that some people and institutions, including on occasion The New York Times, have referred to Night as a novel, "mainly because of its literary style.""But it is not a novel at all," he said. "I know the difference," he added, noting that Night is the first of his 47 books, several of which are novels. "I make a distinction between what I lived through and what I imagined others to have lived through."As it is a memoir, he said, "my experiences in the book - A to Z - must be true." He continued: "All the people I describe were with me there. I object angrily if someone mentions it as a novel."Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Amazon is changing the classification of Night from fiction to memoir. As of this writing, Night is number one on Amazon, bumping Pieces to number two.
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“Were You Aware Of It?”: John Hodgman and the LRB Personals
In John Hodgman's charming 2005 miscellany The Areas of My Expertise, "Were You Aware Of It?" serves as a recurring title for astonishing "facts." One of my favorite among these inclusions reveals that:Jack Ruby owed seventeen dachshunds, whom he referred to as "his children." In an astonishing coincidence, all of his dogs were named either Lincoln, Kennedy, or Oswald, except one, which was named "Li'l Grassy Knoll." Meanwhile, Jacqueline Kennedy kept seventeen cats. She disliked the animals, but kept a pack of trained felines for the hunting of voles. This was an ancient European pastime akin to fox hunting, but replacing the dogs with cats, the fox with voles and/or shrews (moles and mice are disqualifiers), and the horses with single-speed bicycles. Her passion for the sport, which bordered on addiction, was considered a potential liability by some within the White House, who feared that many in mainstream America, who rarely eat vole, would perceive the sport as an aristocratic European fancy. Still, it was practiced on the sly, and as a result, most of Washington, D.C., is still voleless. Continuing in the great Hodgman-ian tradition of "Were You Aware Of It?", I submit the astonishing (and, unlike Hodgeman's, completely true) fact that the illustrious London Review of Books publishes personal ads. (I just began a subscription, so this is news to me.) And they are quite the literary genre: haiku-ishly, Sapphic fragment-ally tantalizing their in brevity, they recall that six word short story of Hemingway's ("For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Used.") and seem to offer kernels of novelish potential to those in the market for adventures in literary romance:M, 48, reaching the end of a marriage of convenience, clings to the belief that there still may be one beautiful woman left who values kindness above all else. Few demands other than intimacy in the beginning, in exchange a generous monthly allowance and the opportunity to travel.Sweet-natured F, 38, battling Dorothea Brooke tendencies. Seeks mildly eccentric unattached man with good heart.Don't tell me about your current literary read, I'll just sigh at the leaden predictability of it all, start twitching after you say "it stays with you" and grate my teeth like two whirling quern stones when you tell me you don't want to see the film until you've finished the book. Instead why not tell me about America's got talent and your favorite continental lager? Averring but occasionally surprising prof.Having just retired my ambition is to become the next Ernst Blofeld. I am looking for a lady to enjoy life with while I take over the world from my headquarters in South-East London.Update: Via commenter Imani, a collection of LRB personals was published in 2006: They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from the London Review of Books
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Man Down
Ed Rants and his Return of the Reluctant blog - a favorite of mine - is down because, in his efforts to publicize the wrongdoings of some racist local DJs, his site was bombarded by visitors looking for the attendant mp3s of the offending DJs. It appears as though some uncharitable linking by the India Times used up all his bandwidth and then some. Here's hoping that Ed can get things up and running some time soon.
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Two New Long-Form Journalism Collections Hit Shelves
I've never been shy about my love for long form journalism - my love for the New Yorker is based on it - so I was intrigued to hear about a pair of books that collect some recent stand-out examples of the work from two other venerable magazines: New York and Harper's. The former is represented in New York Stories and the latter in Submersion Journalism Both were reviewed a few weeks back in the LA Times. I was particularly intrigued by Submersion Journalism which includes work by Wells Tower, an excellent but not terribly well-known journalist who contributes to Harper's, The Believer, Washington Post Magazine and others. We wrote about him a while back in an "Ask a Book Question" post. Unfortunately, a bunch of comments from readers listing several of Tower's pieces were lost in the Great Comments Purge of 2006, but the post nonetheless provides some background.Tower is best known for the remarkable Harper's piece "Bird-Dogging the Bush Vote," for which he, as the LA Times puts it "embeds himself with some Bush boosters in Florida during the 2004 campaign in order to know thine enemy." The article is, unfortunately, not available online for free, but it is included in Submersion Journalism. I've read it, and I think it rates up there with Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail as a piece of tragicomic political journalism.Stepping back, it's always exciting to see collections like these come out, if only for the fact that they highlight some of the best, most entertaining journalism ever written. I concur with reviewer Marc Weingarten in the LA Times who writes, "The Web is clearly where the media is headed. But long, well-informed literary journalism like the stories found in these books is still the province of print. If readers forsake this stuff, well, shame on all of us."See Also: The New New Journalists
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A Rare Treat for Murakami Fans: Pinball, 1973
If you need to get your Murakami fix, but can't stomach the idea of picking up After Dark, here's your solution.Written in 1980, Pinball, 1973 was Murakmai's second novel. It was published by Kodansha and has been out of print for several years, although it's available at Amazon for a whopping $225.The book is part of the "Trilogy of the Rat" (actually four books), which begins with Murakami's first book, Hear the Wind Sing and includes A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance (probably my favorite of his books). Apparently, Murakami refuses to allow either Hear the Wind Sing or Pinball, 1973 to be published outside of Japan, which is ironic, considering both of them are, in my opinion, far superior to either Sputnik Sweetheart or After Dark. This translation, linked below, along with Hear the Wind Sing, was done by Alfred Birnbaum for Japanese readers trying to learn English.The story is classic Murakami, before that became a bad thing. A rootless man who loves Dostoevsky spends his days looking for a hard to find part for a classic pinball machine. Mysterious twins move into his apartment. There's a well and a cat. While it's no masterpiece, it's a good read for Murakami fans and those looking for a place to get started with his oeuvre.Here's a link to a PDF of Birnbaum's translation of Murakami's Pinball, 1973.Bonus link: Some fan-translated short stories I stumbled on while researching this.Update 9/17: The link to the PDF has been fixed.Update 3/8/09: The link to the PDF has been fixed again!
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Boycott the New Yorker Festival…
...is what I will again be forced to do this year, my darling, barring some eleventh-hour issuing of press credentials or a sudden reduction in ticket prices.For a while now, you - the greatest magazine in the history of American magazines - have tantalized me annually with your Festival's smorgasbord of literary talent. And yet, as much as the word-hungry reader in me would love to see, e.g., Lorrie Moore in conversation with Jeffrey Eugenides, the starving artist in me rebels.To be frank, your $25 cover charges cheapen you, New Yorker. After all, in this city which not to look upon would be like death, any given night already offers the discerning gentleman a bevy of comely talent reading for no charge. A nd then, several times per year, events like the PEN World Voices festival present stimulating citywide literary programming for free or at a nominal price.Indeed, with the notable exception of events like your dance party or your gastronomic tour with Calvin Trillin, your Festival strikes this correspondent as a way of charging the public for a publicity junket. And, at current ticket prices, the Festival highlights your worst feature, dearest: your habit of reaffirming the upper class's satisfaction with its own refined sensibility and unimpeachable taste. I mean, who else can afford to get in the door?New Yorker, don't you know you're at your best when you're challenging the status quo from your perch within it? Wouldn't it be subversive to take Conde Nast's money and put on these readings for free, so that any old philistine could attend? I love you, New Yorker, more than you'll probably ever know, but I can't support your Festival. I can't afford to. Why would I buy your cow when I can enjoy your milk for the low, low price of $52 per year?
Rejected New Yorker Cartoons
There are dozens collections of New Yorker cartoons available, and all of the will serve you well enough if you need a fix of that particular and unique brand of humor. A new collection, however, promises something a little different, the rejected cartoons: "Some were too racy, rude or rowdy. Some are too politically incorrect or too weird. A few are probably too dumb." Those are the words of Matthew Diffee, New Yorker cartoonist and editor of the The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker. In a brief piece about the book in the LA Times Diffee writes: So most of our stuff gets rejected; and sure, some of the rejected cartoons are pretty bad and deserve to be hidden forever. But there are always a few gems that are missed, and believe me, we remember them. So I decided to collect the best rejects from a number of my friends and colleagues - all regular New Yorker cartoonists, but all of whom, like me, have nine out of 10 of their submissions rejected.I might have to check this one out.
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