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Showing posts from October, 2005
Funny piece by Jess Row about the Marcus vs. Franzen thing in Harpers . I recall reading Franzen's thing years ago (and Tom Wolfe's thing before that), calling for fiction that actually spoke to readers and not academe. I'm in that camp, I think the most experimental writer I actually like is Burroughs, and he's really not that "experimental." Naked Lunch is, under the insanity, a novel. When I was working on my novel (so funny to write that) formalistic issues like "what is a novel?" seemed already played-out, self-obsessed; readers aren't dumb and sort of see through that. As Row's piece points out, the experimental vs. realist thing is really corny and false, because these "experimental" writers are not living in garrets -- or out of their cars with Jack Casady -- they're heading workshops and MFA programs. And how do you account for truly great, ambitious writers who don't buy into any of that, like Don DeLillo?
Dick Morris is really rolling the dice on this weird book . What if Condi was telling the truth and doesn't to run? I don't really get who the market would be... do conservatives read Dick Morris? I mean, why would they? Maybe anything works when you use a cover image of Hillary looking pissed. I was thinking about the Karl Rove thing, and now I actually hope that he doesn't get indicted. Judith Miller's recent piece indicates that (a) since Libby mentioned Plame some 3 weeks before Plame's husband's NYT piece, they probably weren't trying to "get" Plame's husband but were just talking gossiping about how incestuous the CIA yellowcake thing was; (b) Fitzgerald doesn't have anything real, and is fishing for stuff so he'll look like the investigation was "probing"; and (c) the whole idea of reporters being jailed for using anonymous sources is wrong and bad, and anything having to do with it is bad, too (even if it costs Rove hi