Opposites Attack

Hi!
I wrote this thing for a kind-of online book club for Videogum commentors about A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: MOBFD | Opposites Attack

(other write-ups will appear next week, and then no one will talk about this book again for twelve years)

OMISSIONS: Some really great sex scenes were omitted, at the request of those who are now married or involved. Also removed was a fantastic scene—100 percent true—featuring most of the piece's primary characters and a whale. Further, this version reflects the omission of a number of sentences, paragraphs, and passages. Among them:

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE: Reading him made me speak and even think like him – only DFW and Thomas Pynchon had previously done that.

AND THEN A LITTLE LATER: And then this great, great takedown in the New York Times that I still go back and reread sometimes and about which movie Napoleon Complex once used the F word at me. ON THE INTERNET WHERE IT STAYS FOREVER.

AND THEN STILL LATER: Donnell Alexander read from Ghetto Celebrity, a book that was slated to be one of the first books published by McSweeney’s, and he paused – maybe in mid-sentence, sure, why not  –  and looked at the crowd and said, “I just realized this isn’t a very McSweeney’s style book.”

There were non-white, non-male writers, though, I think? Amanda Davis springs to mind and Zadie Smith hung around the main office for a while. I guess there were a few ladies, but two of the ones that seemed most striking at the time –

(1)   Lucy Thomas, whose slice-of-life stories (collected in “Jokes told in Heaven About Babies”) become distracted and undercut their own narratives with non-sequiturs, and
(2)   Elizabeth Klemm whose “Mr. Squishy” reads like if Infinite Jest was a short story
–        turned out to actually be by dudes (Eggers and David Foster Wallace)

IN THE "BACKLASH" SECTION: Issue 16 of McSweeney’s in 2005 came with a free comb (a throwback to the Galapagos haircuts?), and when I bought it, the employee at the McSweeney’s store rolled her eyes when she showed it to me.) 

AND SOMEWHERE TOWARD THE END:

Thorn: When I first got your book, um, in the mail, when I asked for them to send it to me, because I’d heard it was quite funny, I was worried that it would be another one of these McSweeney Asshole Books, where it’s just a lot of unnecessary verbiage …
Hodgman: You mean it’s not?

Thorn: …Well, I, you know, I mean to some extent it is, I don’t mean to underplay the McSweeney aspect quality of it. But were you worried that it would just fall too deeply into that kind of house style of McSweeney’s?

Hodgman: I wasn’t worried about that because McSweeney’s was the venue that allowed me to explore this voice and this subject matter to begin with. I mean, obviously without McSweeney’s, I never would have written “Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent”; I never would have developed, I think, this sort of, this particular voice of the eternal authority who’s also kind of a blinkered idiot. But more to the point, McSweeney’s gave me this sort of excuse to write funny, because before that I was writing serious short stories that had some comic stuff in it, but McSweeney’s was, as a literary journal to publish serious fiction against experimental fiction against sheer absurdist comedy, I mean, it was very liberating for me. So if it had only reached people who appreciated McSweeney’s, I would probably be pretty happy, because (a) I owe those people a lot as it is and (b) I think there are quite a few of them, you know, who dig it. But I also felt going into it, that I wanted the book to reach as many people as possible and it would be inevitable and I think not unreasonable to compare it to McSweeney’s. I had no idea what that audience might be and I did suspect that it might just reach those people who are already attuned to that McSweeney’s style, who would like it but I’m glad to say that it has reached those people and a little beyond too.

[and then later]

I am lucky, I suppose, that I’ve evaded the McSweeney’s Asshole Book label because I know that there are people out there who, no matter what the quality of the work and no matter what the particular point of view of the individual author they just hate hate hate McSweeney’s. It just really bugs some people. And I guess the worry I had was that the book would find its way into the hands of a journalist or a reviewer who felt that way and simply because they would associate me with something – that I believe in – but because of that, they would be mean about it. And luckily that hasn’t happened. Until right now, actually. So thanks. 

Equivalent!

Once every 209 posts or so, we like to point out something that makes us think of something else, like that Lawrence Weschler "Convergences" thing in McSwy's, only here you're reading it on a blog instead of in a published lit quarterly, so you're less likely to say I do this every seven minutes of my life and usually with more nuance; why am I still reading this?

ok so anyway:

1963 photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt of Parisian kids watching a retelling of "Saint George and the Dragon" VIA THE MAGIC OF PUPPETRY:


Girls watching American Idol:


CREDITS
My awareness of this video via Videogum.
My awareness of that photo via an issue of Life magazine I purchased at some point in high school because there was also a picture of Marilyn Monroe in it.

(Recall: I said I was in high school.)
(Also: Google is scanning all these old images from Life and it's kind of amazing.

I had to look this up, because I am so superior, but apparently the finalists of Am.Idol were both named David, which is why there is still anticipation after the guy says "David".

Watch me get all Weschlery:
St. George is David Cook and the dragon is David Archuleta and GUESS WHO THE PUPPETS ARE.
McSweeney's Book Deal, Please.

benefit of the doubt

Chip's post about a DFW signing reminded me of something I did that was stupid w/r/t book signings. (CHIP: THANKS FOR REMINDING ME I AM STUPID)

I went to a Dave Eggers book signing a while back when Dave Eggers lived near me (and when Dave Eggers lived near Chip, for that matter; now none of us live there in that place, not one): right after AHWOSG came out.

I was in a line to get my copy of the book signed, and the further I moved up the line, the stupider I felt, because he was (/is) sort of like my age, and I felt at the time that if I had written so personal a book, I would feel weird that people wanted me to sign it? And I kept moving up the line and feeling increasingly awkward, like in Zeno's paradox about the arrow never reaching its target because it keeps getting stupider?

And then there was just one person in front of me and that person went to get her book signed, but her book was not AHWOSG; it was Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.

Which I think her strategy was: He will see I am whimsical yet deep and therefore sleep with me.

And he signed her copy of Myth of Sisyphus without commenting on it, and then it was my turn, and whim took over (or maybe antiwhim, as I was trying to cancel out the previously established whim), and when Eggers looked up at me, instead of just telling him my name, I instead asked Eggers to forge Camus' signature on my copy of AHWOSG (since the only signed DFW book I have is Everything and More, I'll just add that what I was going for is f^–1(f(x)) = x where x = attempted whimsy). And Eggers (again, without any comment) wrote:

Oh the horror.
~ Albert Camus

..and I thought, "That's not Camus, that's Conrad," and I walked away feeling stupider and stupider.

But: To my knowledge, he did not sleep with the whimsical and deep girl!

Because after this signing, we all got on a bus and went to see a gallery in lower Manhattan that was displaying paintings by elephants. Because, and this almost doesn't seem like it could have actually happened, apparently during this period in Thailand's history, all of the elephants were being captured and loaded up on methamphetamine and put to work in the circus or as black market laborers. And so these two Russian expats, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, were rescuing the elephants and having them paint things (like literally they held the paint brushes with their trunks) and then they (the Russians) were selling the paintings and then the money from the sale would go to house and feed the elephants. Which, that plan doesn't seem scalable, but it really was a real thing (unless it's not) -- there were actual paintings in the gallery; there were peanut shells littering the floor. And I did not see that girl there.

And anyway: now it's seven years later and I just did a Google book search; this is from The Plague:

Among the heaps of corpses, the clanging bells of ambulances, the warnings of what goes by the name of fate, among unremitting waves of fear and agonized revolt, the horror that such things could be, always a great voice had been ringing in the ears of these forlorn panicked people, a voice calling them back to the land of their desire, a homeland.

Sidenote: At the elephant painting exhibition, Eggers was taking questions ("How long does it take an elephant to paint something?" "Is this real?" "Really?" "Really is it real, though?") and someone asked how many paintings an elephant could do in one day if it was still on Elephant Meth.

This is funny! But also cynical! (RECALL: This was about eight months before we were attacked, and everyone in New York was nice to everyone else for a while.) Eggers said, "I'm not going to answer that."

I don't know the context of that Camus passage, but here is what I'm going to do: I'm going to give Eggers the benefit of the doubt.

In fact, I'm going to try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even though (it is said) we ultimately have no control and even though (to paraphrase) everything in life entropies toward irrationality; Zadie Smith said recently on DFW (and let's just state it outright: the only reason I'm thinking about any of this (= cynism vs. sincerity) at all and not just spending my day reading, like, Gawker is because of DFW) Zadie Smith summarized at least one aspect of his aesthetic thusly: If we must say something, let's at least only say true things.

I am agreeing for the foreseeable future. Let's see how long it lasts.

Dave Eggers forges Albert Camus' signature because why not?
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd

(though now that I think about it maybe I shouldn't start this plan until
after November 4.)



v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
Update, 9/24: Roger Ebert on board with giving people the benefit of the doubt. Alex Balk has the money quote.
YOU GUYS! ZEITGEIST MEANS GHOST TIME!

tildetastic

I was poking around the McSweeney's archives, which I find myself holding off reading and then reading a lot of it at once, as if it were a neglected article of clothing that eventually guilts me into wearing it (looking at you, hypercolor socks), and this thing by Dave Ng, None of My Science Piñatas Are Appropriate for Children, reminded me of a better version of something I had typed a long time ago (9/25/06): the first paragraph of Early Draft of Text Automatically Attached to the End of Outgoing Emails from Horizon Securities Ltd. (which itself was politely declined for publication by McSweeney's, around 2005 or thereabouts, if I'm remembering correctly) (at the time it was easy to pretend that they were afraid they wouldn't be able to render a tilde on their website; now I think I will pretend that they will be afraid that the site is becoming too piñata-y) (it's ok McSweeney's; I bear you no rancor).

Anyway, 9/25/06 = made me want to go back and see when the first post was and it was this: July 26, 2006. That means this blog's second birthday was a week and a half ago! If you forgot to send a birthday presents to the blog, c/o me, here is a fact: Since I work remotely part time, I am at a weird place in my wardrobe-cycle where I actually need more crummy T-shirts to wear around the house.

THUS: Here is the short list of T-shirts I need for my blog to have a good birthday:

• Secret Headquarters' God Save Stan Lee shirt
• The Sound of Young America's glow in the dark shirt (is this even still around? I have the other one)
• Dinosaur Comics' Wizard Has Turned You Into a Whale shirt

OK, I think that's it.

PLEASE DO NOT SEND HYPERCOLOR SOCKS.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, THIS BLOG.

It is no wonder..

..that McSweeney's is experiencing such financial calamity: They have a Feedback Score of 0!!! That doesn't exactly fill me with the comfort level I need from my post-post-post-irony lit journals.

Apparently, they are not, as I am, a "lightning fast payment, friendly, appreciative, A 12 ON A 1-10 SCALE! Excellent Ebayer! Super! Totally recommended. A+A+A+A+"


Please be more like me, McSweeney's.


As a start, please publish everything I send you forever.