Word Blur

If some potty catch some potty...

A kindly professor has taken pity on me and is mentoring me through a writing project. In recent weeks he suggested I read “The Laughing Man,” by J. D. Salinger. I fulfilled my duty in this regard of an instant, but then I got paranoid. There is a book, just this one, that I had never read and when anyone found this out they would freak out on me and press copies into my hand with the most fervent urgings and intonations. What was I going to do if this professor wanted to talk to me about The Book?

So at long last I have read The Catcher in the Rye and understand, in more than just a glimmering kind of way, what people mean when they describe a first-person narrator as “a female Holden Caufield for the twenty-first century,” though why people persist in saying this sort of thing is, now more than ever, beyond me.

There is nothing I can tell you about this book that you don’t already know (excepting, perhaps, that I’m sorry I never returned the copy you loaned me when you said it would change my life) save this: my three-year old is being toilet trained and she now refuses to go to the bathroom without being allowed to “read” The Catcher in the Rye. For real.

This American Strife

Ira Glass is the editor of a book called The New Kings of Nonfiction, and I want to read it.  You either love him or you hate him and I love him.  I'd let the guy program my Tivo.  I'd let him marry my old college classmate.  Is he too twee?  Not for me.  [Tip and diverging opinions courtesy of Paper Cuts.]

Alright

I miss it here. 

I'll just point out how interesting this article on reclusive writers is (stumbled upon via Boldtype).  It recasts the enterprise of a retreat like Salinger's in light of Denis Johnson, Paris Hilton, and the reinvention (dissolution?) of privacy in the 21st century.  The article quotes heavily from Lee Siegel, whose forthcoming Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, sounded so great to me until I read the book description on Amazon:

"Siegel argues that the Web and complementary developments—from reality television to the emergence of business prophets like Malcolm Gladwell—are giving rise to a new and malevolent mass culture..."

Just: no.  Also, I think Paris's new haircut actually looks kind of good.  Anyone?

Literary court hound

When I lived in San Francisco, I attended part of Janet Malcolm’s trial re: In the Freud Archives, just as an interested audience member. Cause I’m crazy like that! I’d love now to be at Laura Alpert/JT Leroy’s trial at the hands of the disgruntled film company Antidote (who bought the rights to Sarah and want their money back because the author doesn't exist).

I Can't Believe it's Not Proust!

Recently read: My Lucky Star, a novel that’s part Wodehouse homage, part gay chick lit (a term I have always taken simply to mean “highly derivative of Bridget Jones Diary“), and part House of Barrymore.  It came recommended and while it was lighter than an Olsen twin’s body mass index, it was also wicked funny.  Not for the faint of heart: the unraveling involves a closeted megastar getting caught on film in flagrante delicto with a masseuse costumed as the Oscar statuette.

Is Dewey Decimal future friendly?

Pro: Tomes and Talismans (Giving Battlestar Galactica a run for its money)

Con: Arizona library drops classification

world wide wack

Kevin Williamson (creator of Dawson's Creek) is back on the small screen and trust me, you need Television Without Pity to make sense of this one -- although they didn't name Liza "The Blonde Joey Potter of Weird Science."  You can thank me for that!

The succinct History of Food: from emmer grain (17,000 BC) to deep-fried Coca-Cola (2006). 

Snooty cam!: get your manatee on.

Rains, pours

As an inveterate gossip whore and lover of all things medieval, I went all gooey when I saw Transforming Talk: The Problem with Gossip in Late Medieval England, a mash-up (okay, actually it's historical scholarship) of a book that looks at the way “gossip functions primarily as transformative discourse.” In a week that has seen Lindsay Lohan’s latest derailment, Mischa Barton’s fainting spell, and Nicole Richie’s birthday invite fiasco, it’s nice to feel that historical precedents suggest our collective analysis of these events might do some good toward “influencing…literary and religious discourse.”

world wide wack

link of the day: LibraryThing's cook book pile contest
bonus link: Fake student & fake physicist take up digs at Stanford.  Give the Stegner Fellowship to JT Leroy!

RIP, Lloyd Alexander

Lloyd Alexander died on May 17^th. He was the author of many, many great children’s books and is most famous for his Chronicles of Prydain, beginning with The Book of Three. My mom read fantastic serials out loud to us growing up: Little House (if you top it off with “on the Prairie” it tags you as one of the uninitiated), Narnia, etc., but I think Lloyd Alexander made the biggest impression on me. Somewhere half way through the series I got way too old for bedtime reading, so I finished it for my younger sister. Than I reread them all one summer with my first great love boyfriend and reread them again last year. They seemed only a little dated – the spunky heroine Princess Eilowny has been outdone in terms of women’s liberation by contemporary standards (not you Hermione!), although as a kid I found her highly subversive; there weren’t many like her. Prydain is drawn heavily from Welsh legends and the scale is appropriately epic, but Alexander’s strength is in driving home the humanity and vulnerability of his characters. To write a story of flawed individuals navigating the battle between good and evil is no small task, but to do it for children with such nuance is nothing short of amazing. It’s hard to imagine a canon that could produce Harry Potter or The Golden Compass without Lloyd Alexander. Sure, we’ll find out whether or not said Harry Potter lives or dies this July, but you’ll have to wait until August to read Alexander’s last novel The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio.