New Beginnings

The Bills on Saturday signed Terrell Owens for 1 year at 6.5 million guaranteed. Um. Yay?

Image from twoeightnine.

I've been putting this off for a while...

...but I'm going to take a break from blogging here, till the end of May or so. (Team Dizzies members are strongly encouraged to post, though!)

I'll occasionally update my website and the Personal Days blog, so please click through if you're interested in readings/appearances and other odds and ends. (Here's the tour schedule part of the site...I say "tour" because I'll be in Poughkeepsie!)

My Astral Weeks column will still appear in the L.A. Times, and I might crank out a Ghost or two.

Here's to the future!



xoxo,
Gossip Ed

(Photo: L.G. Thos.)

Up in smoke — Rock books

"The Mystery League books were a short-lived series in the early 1930s: lurid thrillers created to be sold through cigar shops rather than bookshops...." —Caustic Cover Critic

Read more about "Gene," who designed the eye-catching covers for the ML books, as well as for one of our man Harry Stephen Keeler's novels...

(From Levi)







Also from Levi, for further research: Richard Sharpe Shaver:

During the 1960s and 1970s, now living in obscurity, Shaver searched for physical evidence of the bygone pre-historic races. He claimed to find it in certain rocks, which he believed were "rock books" that had been created by the great ancients and embedded with legible pictures and texts. For years he wrote about the rock books, photographed them, and made paintings of the images he found in them to demonstrate their historic importance. He even ran a "rock book" lending library through the mails, sending a slice of polished agate with a detailed description of what writings, drawings, and photographs were archived by Atlanteans inside the stone using special laser-like devices.

Preschool daze

I. Personal Days is a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award!

(And my other book, Preschool Days, is also a finalist!)

A-sharp to C

Promo video for John Wray's Lowboy—I need to read this now-ish! Not least because Dzyd Sarah mentioned that it has multiple ouroboric references...but also because we went to the same high school...(Also love the Tomine cover)...also it just seems like a good idea for a novel. (Also this review.)

This Goat's Life

(Via Dzyd Zach)

The whole monkey thing

At Paper Cuts, Michael Chabon meets Yuen Wo-Ping:

The biggest bump came when he suddenly said that he doesn’t want there to be a monkey, that the character of Dr. Ha can’t “turn into” a monkey, no monkey, the whole monkey thing is very, very bad. Why? Because — I don’t really get it, but — because of “Iron Monkey.” Because more monkeys will detract from that film, or he has some special relationship with that film and its monkey (even though I can’t remember an actual monkey in that film) — I don’t know.

Face Book

I.
Via an old Soft Skull blog post: Corpus Libris.



















II.
Dzyd Sam's brother, Will, is on a roll with these babies (band + book title):

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Aiken
The House of Pain On Mango Street

Not to be outdone, Sam gives us:
Pedro the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe!
A Movable Feist!
The Sun Kil Moon Also Rises!

2666pence None the Richer

"Absolutely stunning pink"

Pink dolphin! And the captain's last name is "Rue."

(From Jane)

Him-dul-da

Flight of the Conchords...Korean karaoke...heyyy, I'll take it!

Believer film issue...

...is out! Victoria Nelson on Guillermo del Toro...Atkinson on brain-scrambling Polish film posters...Heidi talks to Sam Mendes..."The Varieties of Cinematic Experience"...pieces on Jonas Mekas and The Exorcist and that Esperanto horror film (Incubus) that I've never managed to sit through...interviews with John Sayles, Mike Leigh...much much more...Patton Oswald...MUCH MORE..........The print copy has a DVD of Godard stuff!

Who would win???

The upcoming Nabokov book's subtitle vs. M*A*S*H's theme song—who would win???

(Thanks to Gautam for the VN link)

Pronounced CAISH-lin

The NYT has a nice profile of me old friend Caitlin Macy (Dzyd status: ????), whose new book of stories, Spoiled, has just come out...I offered this blurb for Spoiled (which aside from being excellent has an entry in The Invisible Library), just managing to avoid saying something catchy but not quite right like "a grownup's Gossip Girl!":

"Who else today writes so accurately about the impossibilities of privilege as Caitlin Macy? Packed with real wit and genuine rage, Spoiled is a gin-flavored litmus test, a social X ray set on stun, a grand entertainment, an argument starter. These deft morality tales grip us like the best gossip–then jolt us into feeling."