Matchbook Story, Issue 2

Although this may not be particularly relevant to anyone who doesn't live within commuting distance of Santa Cruz, Matchbook Story is having a bash for the second matchbook volume on July 1st at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery, which is located at 402 Ingalls Street. I'm not an entrant this time, so this doesn't  smack even a little of ruthless self-promotion.

Editor Kyle Petersen probably doesn't really need my help. He had a front page story in the  Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Did I say there was no self-promotion involved? Well, maybe just a little. I was interviewed in said article to hold forth on Matchbook Story and the fate of small local presses in general. Who knows? The words in the article may even be more or less what I said.

July 1st is eavesdropping day in England

I don't live in England, but if I did, I would be very tempted to take part in this interesting competition sponsored by the Guardian. On July 1st, they're challenging everyone to eavesdrop on their neighbors and then take what they record and make some kind of story or other written art piece out of it.

Now frankly, I'm not sure if this really cool, or just mainly cool and a little bit creepy, but in any case if you follow the rules and live in the UK, you might see your work up on their blog or even anthologized. And if you don't live in the UK, why not play along anyway? You can post the result on your own blog, or send it to me and I'll post it here. Subject to my own discretion of course, and you aren't going to be getting any money. Or fame, for that matter. Or copyediting. Basically, you won't be getting anything. Sorry.

Ulysses, or the downside of ebooks, part one

Sure, I work in an indie book store and ebooks apparently threaten our very livelihood. However, that may well just end up being collateral damage of the tech revolution. At any rate, that's not the problem I want to write about today. After going to my  Finnegan's Wake group last night, it's not surprising that this bit of info from Slate's The Big Money feature. In  a rich bit of irony, Ulysses is once again being banned for indecency, this time in the form of an online graphic novel called Ulysses "Seen" where you will have the, uh, titillating pleasure of seeing Buck Mulligan in mid-nude dive.

Although it does raise questions about a corporation like Apple getting foolishly involved in censoring a classic, the good news is that  at this point in time, there are easy enough ways around it. So check out Ulysses "seen".  It's your civic duty to do so...

Jonathan Franzen on The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead

There's a nice essay by Jonathan Franzen on  rereading The Man Who Loved Children by Australian author Christina Stead  in the latest  NYT Book Review. I assume it's a preface to the new edition of the book.

I first came across Franzen through a long rant of an essay about novel writing in the late stages of the twentieth century ( "Perchance to Dream", Harper's, April, 1996, for those who have access to it), so I actually know him first as a  brilliant essayist and only later as a wonderful novelist. It's not easy wearing both these hats so well, but I sincerely believe he does.

I first learned of Stead's The Man Who Loved Children many years ago when I was either just going into college or in some summer hiatus in between. As Franzen says in his article, it has never been widely adopted in college courses, and  I am quite sure that it was through some extracurricular reading that I learned of it and not in the classroom. It's actually a book I've heard endorsed many times over the years and as Franzen says himself, if an intelligent introductory essay by Randall Jarrell in a previous edition at a much more opportune moment in literary history hasn't put it over the top into the classics category, it is probably destined to its outsider status.

I'll admit to having started it once or twice. (Actually, I suddenly remembered that the first reference was a New Yorker article, because I remember quite clearly that there were quotes that I didn't understand the importance of. I was not dissuaded, because I have rarely if ever been wowed by quotes in the New Yorker in reviews. I'm a bit quote  deaf,  I think.) I don't think that at the first stab, I was really old enough to appreciate Stead's effort, but Franzen's essay makes me think I would like it. A lot.

My one quibble with the essay is that it makes out that  Stead was unattractive as a child. That's hard to quite believe from the picture in the review.

Does this mean I'm finally going to get around to tackling it? I would like to say definitely, but I don't know. I'll get back to you on that one.

Requiems for the Departed, edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone

I've been excited by the announcement of this book for some time now, but it didn't seem quite right to put it in my book review blog, as I haven't even laid hands on a copy yet. And you can pre-order it now, but apparently only if you're in the U.K. . But I thought I'd contribute my small bit to the pre-publication buzz by mentioning it here. Perhaps some random British reader will press the wrong button and find him or herself on this page and get interested.

I've followed Gerard Brennan's blog  Crime Scene NI for awhile now, and found it to be a consistently good source of information on the abundant wealth of great Northern Irish crime writing to be had right now. How exciting, then, that he and Mike Stone have managed to assemble so many of its authors between the covers of one small book. There are writers from other parts as well, but the theme they have all to deal with in these stories is combining contemporary crime with Irish myth. How fun is that?

If you check out Gerard's abovementioned blog, you will find both interviews with the authors and their own explanations of why they chose the story they did. It will whet your appetite for the tales themselves, I'm telling you.

Anyone in the U.K. can pre-order their copy of Requiems for the Departed   here. As for the rest of us, we'll just have to hope that a little thing like the Atlantic and maybe a random volcano or two doesn't prevent us from grabbing a copy of this fun collection for too very long.

He's back!

Even a rather ardent fan of The Believer Magazine like myself couldn't help but feel there was something missing from issues of these last many months. That something was Nick Hornby's mostly monthly column, Stuff I've Been Reading. But rumor had it that he would someday return, and now, that rumor is true. Hornby is back. Sure, he's encouraging the hip young reading demographic to read stuff like Austerity Britain, 1945-51, by David Kynaston, but buck up, youth. Everyone's got to graduate from Harry Potter sometime.

Frankly, he must have a civilizing effect, because it's the best issue I've seen in awhile. Although they're going to make you pay if you want to read all of Hornby's column, you can actually read some other great stuff for free on line. There's an excellent article on Leonard Woolf, pre-Virginia, in Ceylon by up and coming novelist Lev Grossman, for example. And in the non-free category, an article I haven't gotten all the way through yet by Annie Julia Wyman on one of the best books ever, Mimesis, by Erich Auerbach.

Also? Ninjas. Apparently, one may be closer than you think...

Is This the Best Space Image Ever?

I don't know, but Wired Magazine seems to think it is.  It's actually courtesy the Hubble telescope and celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Hubble's being out there looking around.

Better take a look now, because even interplanetary space voyagers apparently don't live forever.

(I'd have put the picture here, but it wouldn't be as impressive as Wired's version.)