Building details

Somewhere in NYC. Financial District?

XJ loses her natural mind, a quote.

"[Clarence Thomas] also says -

"I tend to be morose sometimes."

Amen, sir. What do you do when you get morose? I personally take Ritalin and watch the X-Files.

“Sometimes, when I get a little down . . . I look up wonderful speeches, like speeches by Douglas MacArthur, to hear him give without a note that speech at West Point — ‘duty, honor, country.’ How can you not hear those words and not feel strongly about what we have?”

Maybe because what we REALLY have is a global conspiracy to blind the eyes of ordinary citizens who are secretly being used as alien test subjects where the US military is a key player.

I have not just watched 20 episodes of X-Files in a row within the last 72 hours.
Full disclosure: I have, but I still wouldn't look up speeches. That's weird."

Getting closer. . .

"...the much more likely future of books in which they are prized as artifacts, not as mechanisms for delivering written material to readers. This is print book as vinyl record — admired for its look and feel, its cover art, and relative permanence — but not so much for convenience."

This is kind of what I was getting at, but written by someone who clearly does not "get it." It's about the look and feel, it's about the cover art and the permanence AND it's not inconvenient, but it's still a wonderful "mechanism" and the book remains far more than an "artifact."

Also, hello. The linked article is yet another ridiculous instance of pressing one medium into another to the detriment of, well, everything. Ever.

"Yeats had nobody," but looked like my Grandpa Ed

T. S. Eliot said, about his own attempts to write verse drama: “Yeats had nobody, we had Yeats.”

Noir-ish wisdom from the Middle East

“If I had my way, I’d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more,” the detective said. “At least they’re not sectarian.”

Waiting For Godot. . . Like You Never Wanted To See It.

Fact: Ska isn't cool anymore in Jamaica

Maybe ska isn't cool in Jamaica anymore, but it's still cool here. In my apartment.

Roland Alphonso. Duke Reid. Don Drummond. Baba Brooks.


Excellent.

Elizabeth Warren: TARP Hottie

So droll, so cute--catch her on The Daily Show. Last night's, I guess.

Colin Robinson in LRB on The Future of Publishing

Olga brought this essay to my attention. It serves, basically, as a synthesis of all of our biggest fears about the future of publishing and, for me, one sincere hope. Also, a decent overview, if, I hope, a bit over-pessimistic.

Quote: "Perhaps the problem has to do with more than just the way in which words are transmitted. People bowl alone, shop online, abandon cinemas for DVDs, and chat to each other electronically rather than go to a bar. In an increasingly self-centred society a premium is placed on being heard rather than listening, being seen rather than watching, and on being read rather than reading." And this has been my complaint on a near-constant basis for years.

Quote: "The future of much of the industry will be dominated by electronic distribution, internet marketing to niche audiences, and reading by print-on-demand or hand-held electronic devices. There is opportunity as well as challenge in this model. The roles of editor and publicist, people who can guide the potential reader through the cacophony of background noise to words they’ll want to read, will become ever more important." And this has been my more-recent contention. There is an opportunity as well to challenge this model for small presses.

Parenthetical Quote: "(Wikipedia, meanwhile, is planning to produce a print edition of its most popular entries, with the aim, it says, of proving wrong those ‘who say that printed encyclopedias are a thing of the past in the internet age’.)" What the fuck?

"a fountain pen of good repute."

The question of what to pay which authors has confounded publishers at least since a stationer agreed to give Milton £5 for the right to sell “Paradise Lost.” Joseph Conrad often begged his agent for more money and once asked to be advanced “a fountain pen of good repute.”

From Michael Meyer's essay in the New York Times

Swoon

"When I’ve posted this I’ll go & have a Turkish bath & stupefy my nerves in sweaty duration. My person is developing dirty habits."
-From THE LETTERS OF SAMUEL BECKETT, Volume I: 1929-1940, as quoted by Anthony Lane. I picture Squeo saying this from within a stained undershirt.

From the same review:

"The year 1938 was notable for the publication of his first novel, “Murphy,” and for a French pimp by the misleading name of Prudent, who stabbed Beckett in the street, just missing the heart. “I don’t know why, sir, I’m sorry,” he said, when his victim inquired about a motive."

A gentler time. . .

I am a hopeful fellow tonight

There's something wrong with the world but on this darkling precipice I am hopeful. The problem is a lack of quality, but I can't help but feel that you and I and others are already pushing back against this senseless barrage of SUCK. You weren't wrong when you were 13 or fourteen or 15 or more. Almost everything sucks. But some things don't.

More potent than voting or marching, spending money is a political act. Repeat after me: Spending money is a political act. I believe that something of superior quality is worth buying. I love luxury; I despise decadence. There's a difference. Spend your money where it supports what you love. Pay for the music you love. The sandwich you love. The coffee. The books. Pay for quality and more quality will be produced. Buy good shoes. When you pay a premium for a brand, buy value not image.

This isn't new or original. But I'm hopeful tonight and that IS new and original. To me. Tonight.

I'll be the millionth person to stand up and say there's something (everything) wrong with the publishing industry. There's something obviously wrong when Meghan McCain has a book deal with an advance in the six figures and only one book of Ferenc Karinthy's (notable Hungarian water polo champion) has been published to English. But the format (books!) isn't obsolete any more than vinyl is an obsolete musical format. It will become smaller and the business needs to become smaller also because this shit is too big and good just doesn't seem to come from big.

The publishing industry isn't about books. It's about selling feces to the already shit-covered masses. Books, as a format, are replaceable to an extent, but never completely. Maybe textbooks should be digital. Maybe the university presses (Muck Fichigan) will go digital too, but I'd like to see them--EACH of them--support a small press operation. I'd like to see a massive growth in small presses--for profit or non-profit--even as the "industry" comes crashing down. I want specialized boutique presses executing excellent books with excellent design. I want them sold to excellent indie stores by excellent and well-read sales reps employed by a wide-ranging and benevolent distribution giant (big distribution still makes sense) and then sold by those excellent indie stores to a discerning public.

Vinyl isn't dead. Against all odds, vinyl sales increase every quarter, every year. Wonderful labels like the Chicago-based Numero Group do for music what presses like Open Letter and Dalkey Archive do for books. Ugly Duckling Presse and the many small presses like it are making books art again.

And I'm hopeful. Because I can go to work at a small MarketCafe if I feel like it and get an individually brewed cup of excellently roasted coffee, buy some excellent meat, and go home. And Z&H will never drive McDonald's or Starbucks out of business, because some people just want what they have to sell and that's ok. But you spend your money on what YOU like. Not just some of the time, but every time.

But more to the point, spend your money on what I like, so that it doesn't go away and leave me desolate. I am, after all, a hopeful fellow.

Tonight.

Kameno Bell

My landlord is an Illini football legend.

From Love & Obstacles by Aleksandar Hemon

"This happened in 1981, when I was long and skinny; my legs hurt and I could not stretch them in the cramped bus. Pus accumulated in my budding pimples; there was an arbitrary erection in progress. This was youth: a perpetual sense of unease that made me long for a place where my discomfort would seem natural, where I could wallow in my own wounds. My parents, however, believed that it was their duty to guide me to a good, pleasant place, where I could be normal. They arranged spontaneous conversations about my future, during which they insisted that I declare what it was that I wanted from life. I responded with derivations of Rimbaud’s rants about the unknown quantity awakening in our era’s universal soul, about “scents, sounds, colors, and thought mounting thought,” etc. Needless to say, they were terrified by the fact that they had no idea what I was talking about."

Book Review: Khirbet Khizeh

At long last, my review of KHIRBET KHIZEH has gone up at Rain Taxi.

I wrote it.

A note from Dockers

Dockers, the well-respected manufacturer of slacks and socks and any number of other items, has informed me via Pandora internet radio that they "support my right to rock with Pandora on Blackberry."

Thanks, guys!

I'm going to Jamaica. Goodbye.

Book Review: The Halfway House

I wrote one for Three Percent.

I wish I had a. . .

BOAT!

I would call it The Root Beer Float and onboard, there would BE root beer floats.