Vigorously Lazy

Welcome to a semi-weekly segment wherein I chronicle a selection of modern classics that I have started reading but subsequently given up on for various reasons. Let the failure begin!

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

I love, love, love Salinger’s Nine Stories. Probably the best collection I’ve ever read. A true master of character, dialogue, interaction, humor and pathos. But something about his novels never really did it for me. I thought Catcher in the Rye was whatevs to be quite honest. I realize that the reason it was such a groundbreaking book was because of when it was published. Reading that book in 2003 kind of takes a bit of the subversive oomph out of it.

I got about a third of the way through F & Z before I called it quits. I don’t know. I just had a hard time sympathizing with the young socialite crowd of New York in the 1950’s. I know with Salinger there’s an eventual payoff. I just lost patience I guess. I’ll come back to by, my love. Someday.

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

Probably the most important book I’ve ever given up on. Filkins has been writing about his encounters with Islamic fundamentalism for over ten years now and it’s all in this here book. Every savage detail from a public beheading he attended in a burnt out soccer stadium to wandering the ruins of the twin towers on September 11th.

I don’t think there’s any surprise why I gave up on this one. It’s an amazing book, but I simply got tired of being bummed out and scared shitless when I picked it up.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

I’ve got very little tolerance for stories that go nowhere. Apparently that’s just how Murakami rolls. The only thing keeping you going in this book is his voice. Slow, languid, cool, matter-of-fact, almost in total antithesis of his American conteporaries who feel the need to belt you over the head with an intense storytelling style.

It’s a little harsh to say that this story goes nowhere. He sets his characters a course, but where that course is going is a mystery to anyone. An unemployed man goes searching for his wife’s lost cat and along the way he encounters a surly nine-year-old girl, a mysterious abandoned house and it’s all  supposed be a story about a deteriorating marriage. Sounds like a blast.

Kind of off topic here but did you hear that he just sold roughly one bajillion copies of his new book?

Man, must be doing something right. Does this make me an idiot for not getting what the big deal is? I’ll give him another shot when his new 1,005 page jam comes out in English I guess. But if there’s a missing cat in it, so help me…

After a couple weeks of dipping deeply into the nostalgia pool for BBCDW I figured it’d be a good idea to bring it back to now-times. But not too now-times.

David Carr’s mem-wuah The Night of the Gun chronicles the depths of his many, many years of substance abuse. Sounded like a pretty good book when it came out in hardcover about a year ago. But I didn’t buy it back then cause of a personal rule of mine that might get me into trouble with most book aficionados: I can’t stand hard cover books. They’re cumbersome, you can’t fold them back and hold them with one hand, they’re unecessarily heavy, and if you get upset or dissapointed with the contents therin and decide to whip the thing across the room in a little baby tantrum you’re more likely to break something valuable. Plus this one’s hardcover design left a lot to be desired. It kind of smacked of a little too much effort, “It looks like a gun but it also represents drugs. Get it? Get it?!” Yeah, yeah, we get it, we get it. You enjoying your first year at art school?

Something about contrast of the photos on the cover of paperback just struck me as a little more genuine and haunting. They kept the same hand-scrawled chalk font which was working well for them the first time around. And they even managed to tastefully work in a cover blurb by a insanely popular author, which, in my eyes, is often a no-no. Well done, nameless Simon & Schuster paperback designer.

Seeing that this is a concept that I spend probably 60-70% of my day focusing on/wrestling with/ralleying against/crying shamefully in a corner about, I was pumped to see that someone made a documentary on the subject.

I hope it turns out to be something along the lines of an orientation video for anyone thinking about committing something to paper and/or cyber paper.

Thanks Papercuts.

A few weeks ago wildly successful writer and educational emporer, Dave Eggers, spoke at an Author’s Guild dinner about how things in print aren’t as bad as one would think and that everyone should just chill the fuck out. In the speech he gave out his email address with the instruction, “If you ever have any doubt, e-mail me, and I will buck you up and prove to you that you’re wrong.”

And me being a publisher myself, someone with a vested interest in the future of print (and, really, just a person wanting to get some of his concerns off his chest) I emailed him. And I heard back from him yesterday. Click through to read our correspondence.

Short Story Month is coming to a close this week. I just want to go on record saying how awesome of an idea I think this is and I want to personally thank Dan Wickett over at EWN for not only tirelessly promoting the artform that I truly, deeply love and believe can change peoples lives, but also for promoting talented writers that have yet to make a name for themselves in the world. Both highly commendable efforts. I’m looking forward to next year when I plan on taking Short Story Month events out of the blogosphere and into the real world!

So to wrap SSM up here at VigLaze I decided to link a story from a man whom I believe is the greatest short story writer that ever lived: Raymond Carver. It’s a story called A Small Good Thing. It’s from his collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. If you plan on picking this collection up in the near future, make sure you’ve got a bag with a nice and sturdy strap to carry it around in because these stories are heavy. They may look like stylistically simple tales, but these stories will sneak in through the window of your mind when you’re not paying attention and sit themselves down on your mind-couch and never leave.

May 15th’s entry of BBCDW got me digging through all sorts of Flickr pools in search of the perfect cover. I’ve yet to find it, but in the meantime there’s some pretty stellar gems laying around.

Check out this paperback pool I found this morning that seems to be loosely centered around Penguin and Pelican releases from the 60’s and 70’s. Must’ve been nice to be around in a time when people were a little more artful in their decisions for reprints seeing as it’s mostly a snooze-fest now.

The news came down the pike this afternoon that Al Pacino is playing Dr. Jack Kevorkian in an upcoming Showtime movie. The vid in the post showed Kevorkian talking about his artwork at a gallery opening. First off, I had no idea the guy painted. Second off, I had no idea he would be my favorite painter of all time. I would pay a VERY large amount of money to have one of these nightmare-inducing, psyche-scarring masterpieces in my possession. These were the highest res versions I could find. You still get the hellish idea.

I really only knew Kevorkian from the image he held in the media as a silver-haired, murderous, demon doctor. After watching this video, he seems like kind of an awesome guy.

Earlier this morning I saw a comment left by Gary Johansan (one of the guys in the Kluge vid). His mention of the U. of Tampa Book Arts Studio piqued my interest so after a little searching around I found their blog. After further searching I even came across Gary’s blog which included this particularly interesting post about the University of Tampa, formerly the Tampa Bay Hotel and currently the Henry B. Plant Museum.

The 6 acre, quarter mile long, 511 room compound was built in 1891 and was an operational hotel until it closed in 1930. After three years of dormancy the University of Tamps was allowed to set up shop within its doors and used its suites as classrooms and offices.

I’ve driven past this building many times but I had no idea what it was. I’m making a pilgrimage there one day to see if I can conjure any turn-of-the-century ghosts.

There are some very cool things in your back yard if you’re willing to dig around a little.