X-Filers note

http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=gillianandersoncharity

Auction on E-Bay of various memorabilia, for a good charity.

TRUTH.

The decline of fiction starring Jonathan Safran Froer

Last week the Atlantic announced that from here on in, it would be publishing fiction only once a year, in a special issue. Once upon a time, Playboy supported a whole generation of worthwhile authors, from Shel Silverstein to Isaac Bashevis Singer and a host of talented goys, too. Before that, Sports Illustrated published Faulkner. Now, there's The New Yorker and the Paris Review and little else, and the consolidation of publishing houses has nearly wiped out the mid-list author, leaving young authors with just one chance to write that great book before they get dropped, and just a handful of editors deciding who gets that one shot at the brass ring. With the decreasing number of outlets for quality fiction, each season's "young stars" find themselves praised regardless of the quality of their work—there's a common readership for Lahiri and Eggers, even though she's brilliant and he's anything but.

(no subject)

The back yard is a pile of roses today, birds and butterflies rioting about everywhere, sparkly sunlight.

If you want to find the gas prices for your locale in the U.S., start here.

I appear to have rowed myself out to sea.

An employee of the library reports that the new regime there intends to "run it like a business".

I ought to be a lone rifleman on a water tower somewhere.

(no subject)

My communication difficulties are increasing. I've also made at least three simple-minded errors today with important work stuff. I say the wrong word; I express myself in ways that annoy or confuse others; I get things reversed; I spend 20 minutes trying to think of a simple word. This is not my brain, this is my brain on drugs.

I'm sure the next thing I'm prescribed will be the perfect solution, though. It always has been, since 1986 now. Could psychiatry please leave the Middle Ages some time soon? These leeches sting like crazy.

(no subject)

I've been reading Bartleby & Company, which is a novel about writer's block. It puts me in mind of the first chapter of The Confessions of Zeno (last cigarette), or maybe some characters from Camus. It's all meta, but that's the zeitgeist; at least this is a good one.

The whole book is a series of reasons for not writing, people who didn't write, people who destroyed their writing, people who didn't finish, etc. Since I myself am the writer who doesn't, it's an attractive topic.

My father wrote a novel called Tenth which took as its theme the fact that great composers don't finish their tenth symphonies, and our protagonist takes on the task of finishing one. A nice touch in Tenth is that the composer in question is Thomas Mann's fictional Adrian Leverkuhn.

I don't know why I can't write. I haven't since about 1995, really. It's not that I think the world is deprived of some wonderful thing I have inside me. It's more that I feel constipated and grumpy about it.

There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton. — H.L. Mencken

bye bye johnny tonight

A nice tribute to legendary musician Johnny Johnson.

avis general

because people ask and have asked; i didn't remove you from my e-friends list because i dislike you or yours, and it doesn't necessarily mean i'm not reading you any more. i'm not dealing with stress very well now and i'm paring things down in general, including the amount of stuff i read and the amount of people i deal with.

it's not you, it's me, etc.

this has been a cliché