Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for May 11, 2008

I. Levi's on a roll...Among other things, he brings news of a possible Ouroboros sighting—from the files of Hard Case Crime:

[HCC mastermind Charles] Ardai is currently writing Hard Case's fiftieth book, Fifty-to-One, to be published under his own name at the end of the year. Unexpectedly, it's a comedy, written in fifty chapters, each named after a Hard Case Crime novel. That qualifies as Oulipean, if just barely . . . but--question for Ed--might it also count as an Ouroboros? Especially once you see that the cover features tiny versions of a bunch of the Hard Case covers?

II. James takes Oliver bowling.

III. I've been updating ed-park.com with the latest reviews...including this nice one from the Guardian.

IV. What am I going to blog about at Powell's?? This begins tomorrow. Also tomorrow, my longish story (or shortish novella) "The Oblivion Arms" goes up at Five Chapters...it is from the unpublished novel Dementia Americana. (Another bit of it, "T.H.C.," appeared in LIT #12 last year.) A very different sort of novel from Personal Days...or is it?

V. This plug required by law: Pre-order Personal Days!

Dinosaur Jr. — The Empire never ended — Menashe vs. Roth

Musical Dino

Feb. 12, 2008 -- A massive beach-dwelling, plant-eating dinosaur in Mexico might have produced music, according to the international research team that analyzed its fossils and identified it as a new species from south of the border. —Discovery News

* * *

Dadistan goes sci-fi.

* * *

Over at Nextbook, Dizzyhead Rachel talks to Samuel Menashe:

About thirty years ago, I met Philip Roth. I stepped out of a gallery on Madison Avenue, and he was walking on the sidewalk so I boomed off, “There goes Philip Roth, enemy of the Jews!”

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for February 6

I.

Apple's Steve Jobs on Kindle: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Over at Three Percent, Dizzyhead Chad vows: "No more Mac products for our office until Jobs recants this ridiculous remark."

Arg! The Jobs quote made this lifelong Mac user wince. Bad, bad!

I can imagine Jobs reading this article and nodding: "Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book."

Meyer, who never once jumped ahead to see what would happen and avoided skimming large passages of text in search of pictures, first began his oddball feat a week ago. Three days later, the eccentric Midwesterner was still at it, completing chapter after chapter, seemingly of his own free will.

"The whole thing was really engrossing," said Meyer, referring not to a movie, video game, or competitive sports match, but rather a full-length, 288-page novel filled entirely with words. "There were days when I had a hard time putting it down."

II.

Stop that e-mailing—let's write letters!


III.

Too exciting: An ARC of Jenny's book!

IV.

Super Tuesday finds Dadistan in a political mood:

Are babies Republicans? Let's examine some of their positions: against choice and birth control, and yet they also favor the Family Medical Leave Act, incentives for telecommuting, and the right to breast-feed in public, so maybe they are really anti-choice Democrats.

V.

"Boredom is the mother of imagination." —A.E. Stallings, on Harriet.

Reminds me of a story in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine — by Asimov himself! — in which a writer wishes (upon a demon?) that his life were more efficient...no more waiting in lines, etc. The wish his granted — and his creative output decreases. He no longer has the yawning moments of dullness that his brain used to strive to fill.

I can't remember the title of the story...or the characters...who I think reappeared in a number of IA's stories for his own magazine.