Caine’s grin is priceless. Check out Caine’s Arcade.
via DF, a must-read blog
Thanks, Gruber, for Making My Morning
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Author Archives: Steve, i.e., him
Reading Tomorrow at Pen Parentis
Come on down:
http://www.penparentis.org/literary-salon-events.html
1981 Châteauneuf de Pape
Bought this bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape a heck of a long time ago and am wondering if anyone out there has any notion of whether a) it has any value, b) if it’s even drinkable, and c) what it might go well with if I do decide to drink it.
If you know anything about any of this, comment, please.
1981 Châteauneuf de Pape
1981 Châteauneuf du Pape, the label
1981 Chateauneuf du Pape, the neck
A Very Special One-Time Offer
In honor of the really fun reading at KGB Bar, I’ve got a special promotion going today and tomorrow on Amazon. You can get Second Son for free. Give it a shot. If you don’t have a kindle, you can still read it with the Kindle app for your mac, pc, iPhone, android device or iPad.
And while you’re there, why not go on and pick up a copy of The Final Appearance of America’s Favorite Girl Next Door.
Also, check out Carter Sickels‘s work. He read with me last night. Really good, finely observed stuff. Can’t wait to read the whole novel.
Fiction and Loneliness
I’ve read it more than once that for David Foster Wallace, whose work I admire tremendously, and for Jonathan Franzen, whose work I also admire tremendously, fiction was/is (Franzen said in an elegy to Wallace) “‘A way out of loneliness’ was the formulation we agreed to agree on.” Since the first time I heard that idea, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about it, specifically if it were true for me. If I write and read fiction as a way out of loneliness.
I don’t think so. Continue reading
Nice Review of Final Appearance
Small Press Reviews has this to say about Final Appearance:
“A shark attack, a starlet in hiding, a mysterious black box. The opening pages of Stephen Stark’s The Final Appearance of America’s Favorite Girl Next Door have all the makings of a Hollywood page turner, but the novel’s style places the author in a far more literary league.” Read more at Small Press Reviews.
Reamde
Reamde, Neal Stephenson’s newest novel, is, as many reviewers have noted, a doorstop of a thriller. That much is true. All through my reading, though, which took me way longer than many of his other novels, I kept thinking that the book ought to have been shortened by about 300-500 pages. That’s not a statement I would make about Stephenson’s other door stop-sized books.
I started reading Stephenson a long time ago, but I don’t recall exactly how I first came across Snow Crash. What I do remember how I got so totally hooked on the novel that I spent one late night during a family vacation more or less hiding in a bathroom at a beach rental Continue reading
New Readings on Tap for February
I’ve got two readings happening in February, on Feb 5 at KGB Bar and on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, at Pen Parentis. Both are in New York. Save the date.
The greatest show you’ll never see
Name a standup comedian that hasn’t been on a sitcom, The Daily Show, or Saturday Night Live. Name one who has appeared on, say, Letterman, Late Night, etc., whom you hadn’t heard of before but made you laugh. Tough, isn’t it?
There are lots of men and women out there who will make you hurt yourself laughing, but not unless you go out and see them — how many great shows are you missing?
What I’m talking about here is standup comedy. In a review of a Hannibal Burress show (ever heard of him?) published in the New York Times on Nov.3, the critic, Jason Zinoman, says, “Despite the rumbling buzz surrounding this comic who has refined his skills for nine years, first in Chicago and in New York, obscure dance companies have been reviewed more often in the mainstream press.” Continue reading
Disintermediation will not make publishing as we know it go down the tubes [U]
In a recent interview with The Rumpus, Laura Miller of Salon (her work also appears in a lot of other places), was asked what she sees “as the major challenge facing book publishing today.” In response, she laid out a number of concerns and issues, all of which are worthy of more discussion (and it would be cool if she did an essay on this, because I’d love to see her expand her thoughts).
[It should also be said that she says a lot of other stuff that is worth reading—about personality and reviewing, and reading outside of her comfort zone—and totally worth reading, regardless of what you think of her reviewing habits. There being, as one old friend used to put it, no taste accountants. But I love this remark: “trust me, there is no joke so broad that there won’t be someone out there who’ll think you mean it seriously.” Happens every day.]
Each of the following “concerns” are direct quotes from her response in the interview. I’ve put what she likely just rattled off informally into a more formal structure, which means I could be seen as taking her out of context. So be it.
Concern #1. The whole stratum of expertise embodied by agents and editors and booksellers might be lost in the disintermediation currently going on.
While this is a legitimate concern, to a certain extent, it’s a nonissue. I think Tim O’Reilly has it right when he said that “isn’t necessarily the old economic models that survive, but economies survive, and new players and models arise.” Read his post here. Continue reading