Audioboros

I. Dzyd Joe's Driftwood Singers blog gives us a chance to experience Earth's doom metal 'boros.

II. And the Cleveland Plain Dealer has a followup to Joe's Blvr piece on reclusive singer-songwriter Bill Fox. (Fox now works at the CPD.)

III. I always assumed that paper's name had to do with the Great Plains...but what if it means something like, "We are dealing with you plainly" (i.e., without subterfuge)?

Son of Table-Talk of P.G. for June 8, 2008

I. New Believer is out! Not the music issue (which will appear next month) — but a "must-have" all the same...Zadie Smith...Blake Bailey on John Cheever and Frederick Exley...Dzyd Linden on B.S. Johnson...Paul Feig Sedaratives...interviews with Gus Van Sant and newly minted Blvr. Book Award winner Tom "Remainder" McCarthy...and much more!

II. Anyone know anything about Meatpaper?

III. I talk about six of my favorite books over at The Week—I hadn't realized two-thirds of them were out of print...

IV. A Korean review of Personal Days!

V. I'll be reading in New York and Boston (well—Newtonville!) later this week. More here soon.

Late-day post

New Believer is out—the incredible visual issue! Sheila Heti interviews Dave Hickey...Claudine Ko talks to Ai Weiwei...temporary tattoos...Paul Collins...Alexander Provan on Las Vegas carpetry and Dizzyhead Fhyll on Eileen Chang...the first review I've read of Alexander Theroux's massive new novel Laura Warholic....plus more Dave Hickey...and more more more, it's really good!

And the new New-York Ghost is out—the incredible letters issue!

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Monday, October 1

Time to pick up the October Believer, which features an interview with the great Adrian Tomine (whose graphic novel Shortcomings is just out; he'll be signing at that store in Brooklyn on Wednesday I think?), a conversation between Dizzyhead/Psychic E. singer/Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape author Sarah Manguso and short-short story wizard Amy Hempel, and Dizzyhead Rachel's fascinating piece on dream researcher Allan Hobson...oh and also a short review by me! (on Selah Saterstrom's The Meat and Spirit Plan)...and much, much more™...Levi on The Eustace Diamonds...No Image Available: my novel, Personal Days, has popped up on Amazon (it's not out till May)...For Beatles fans: Let it Be...Dissected! (via Mike Gerber)...Paul Hornschemeier has a blog...DizzyhEd Halter went to the Housing Works sale and unearthed a "gem from 1955: Keen Teens: 101 Ways to Make Money by Stookie Allen (including an early glimpse of SF writer Joanna Russ)...Keep those likes/dislikes coming...

Waterworld

The obscure local daily that I read has a story today about aquariums, pegged to the death of the whale shark (Ralph) at Atlanta's Georgia Aquarium. It mentions Ginger Strand's Believer piece. Here's a taste:

In an essay published in The Believer in 2005 before the Georgia Aquarium opened, Ginger Strand catalogs the relationship between aquariums and ruined ecosystems: the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California is on the old Cannery Row, made obsolete by the depletion of sardine stocks; the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward was paid for largely by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Settlement Fund; in the Ocean Voyager exhibit in Atlanta, there are scant and inconsistent facts about whale sharks — they reach 45, 60 or 65 feet depending on which sign is consulted — but copious details on how they were airlifted from Taiwan (“via UPS!”).

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Here's an illustration from dreams of yore.

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Also in the Times—Dizzyhead Dennis on Twin Peaks. How about this lede, eh? The kid can write!

LIKE the homecoming queen who was its resident ghost, “Twin Peaks” died young and left a ravaged but still beautiful corpse. Both demises are now inextricably linked: When David Lynch’s hit series revealed who killed Laura Palmer in the fall of 1990, it also committed a kind of symbolic suicide.

McCloud 9 — Mots sans frontiéres

The new Believer is out, and—I love it. Brothers Scott and James Browning visit the North and South Pole, respectively—each with their mom (but not each other). You need to see this in print—the top half of each page consists of Scott's journey, the bottom half is taken up by James's.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Taylor visits the house of the great "I hate Austria" Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, and learns (among other things) that the author was a Prince fan—a wonderful piece, often echoing TB's style, that can be enjoyed even if you're not yet a Bernhardian.



And there's much more: Dizzyhead Paul on allonymic lit—books falsely published under an author's name...Conversations with Namesake director Mira Nair and with Omnivore's Dilemma writer Michael Pollan...Online you can read Hillary Chute's great interview with Understanding Comics author/artist Scott McCloud (Hillary's also co-edited the Winter 2006 number of Modern Fiction Studies, devoted to Graphic Narrative—a must for brainiac graphic novel aficionados.)

This is no April Fool's!

Time to subscribe? Definitely. I can't believe how cheap it is!

(Believer illustration by Tony Millionaire.)

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The new anthology Words Without Borders looks terrific—writers I've heard of (Jonathan Safran Foer, Edwidge Danticat, Javier Marías, et al.) introducing writers I haven't heard of: Italy's Giorgio Manganelli, Korea's Jo Kyung Ran, Norway's Johan Harstad. Perfect eclectic subway reading. (Thanks to Dizzyhead Gautam, who worked on the book.)

The uses of boredom — Parlor game — "The Best Approach" to Shakespeare

"A Case of Boredom," Ghita Schwarz's excellent essay in the new Believer, is featured on the Wisconsin Public Radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge. Hear Ghita read from her piece, and learn what scientists are saying about boredom—it's not boring at all!

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About a day after I listened to the segment, I came across another Ghita, or rather Ghitta, in something I was reading: a reference to the Hungarian photographer Ghitta Carell. I realized why the name was so fascinating—it's that abecedarian cluster of letters at the beginning.

A B C D E F G H I t-t-a...

This suggested a game of sorts—how many writers/artists can you think of whose names contain three letters in alphabetical order?

GHIta Schwarz/GHItta Carell
Oscar HIJuelos
Seth MNOokin
Mos DEF

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Dizzyhead Mollie has a very funny take on the Times review of the Theater of the Blind production of A Midsummer Night's Dream ("Every single assertion is completely false!"). Her own response to the show is worth reading:

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I read the "Director's Note." Directors and academics are always claiming to have found The Best Approach to interpreting and/or performing Shakespeare, but it takes a special kind of pomposity to claim, as director Ike Schambelan does in his notes for the Theater by the Blind production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, that "this is a deeply revolutionary production, so entertaining and clear that you never want to see another Shakespeare that doesn't let him speak in his own form, his own voice."

Leaving the theatre two hours later, the boyfriend said to me, "He was right about one thing—I never want to see another production of Shakespeare."