Black Garterbelt

Sara[h], You're the Poet in my Heart

Your pal here hasn't been following this Laura Albert/"JT LeRoy" legal case too closely, but it seems odd that Albert got sued for fraud just as the story got interesting.  (It seems like anyone who was paying attention knew the LeRoy character was 95% bullshit, realness of the teenage hustler notwithstanding, so isn't it more intriguing to know that the whole thing was orchestrated by a woman who looks like Michael Jackson at his most Greta Garbo'd?)

Naturally, here comes someone who not only likes Albert's writing, but thinks that she's our mirror, to reflect who we are, in case we don't know:

Before the scandal broke, I taught [Sarah] in a college class (called Sexuality and Literature): Most of my students loved it. Though the book's narrator is, as "LeRoy" was, a cross-dressing Appalachian teen prostitute, the novel is not and could not be a slice of any imaginable real life. Instead, Sarah is a defiantly unrealistic fantasia on the difference between memoir and fiction. It's also a poke in the eye for anyone who thinks—as many people around "LeRoy" thought—that a novel should document an author's life.

This much I am willing to accept.  I tend to think Albert's writing is more of a comment on how luridness buoys bad prose, allowing it to float defiantly upon the snotgreen sea of critical praise, but as long as we agree to keep speculation about the purity of the author's intentions out of...wait, we're not going to do that?

OK:

Hot in Herre (and I'm Herre to Hellp)

You're not following the weather in Denver.  If you were, you'd know it's hot.

Nonetheless, your pal offers this (self-created) drink to help you beat the heat:

Bad Apple

• One (1) 16.9 oz. can Strongbow cider*
• One (1) or two (2) oz. bourbon**, depending on how gully you are
• Ice

Combine; drink; listen to the Mountain Goats; wonder what happened to that Rake's Progress guy who used to be funny and post alla time. 

* Or whatever.  Woodchuck is good, if sweet.  Hornsby's is OK, if you insist.
** I suggest Corner Creek, if you can get it.

It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world

"For the love of God, take care never to grow careless about venial sin, however small … There is nothing small if it goes against so great a sovereign."

***

The tagline for a review of Marilyn Manson's latest album:

Nabokovian Jesus Freak in Wonderland (or Cars, Sex, and Death)

Sure, this is trivial, but if thinking people allow this to continue we might as well retire "Nabokovian" and "Lolita" from the lexicon altogether.  Aside from the oxymoronic "Nabokovian Jesus Freak," what we have here is a reference to Marilyn Manson as "Nabokovian" because he fucks a woman young enough to be his daughter and flaunts it in his songs and videos.

Let me be plain: Manson is the opposite of "Nabokovian." 

Editors of the world please try harder.

And if you never had a question, then you'd never have a problem

In life, friends, there are puzzlers.

Loyal Simpsons viewers remember when a Sphinx-like, stoned Homer stumped Ned Flanders with the question "Can Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cannot eat it?"

Then, there are simple curiosities, such as "Why is it every time I read an article about the evil of blogs, I find it hard to follow the muddled arguments, but I swear I can smell the author's urine-soaked underwear?"

Life, a rich tapestry indeed.

Now, we come to the question of whether a person of woman born can compose a question so stupid that Chuck Palahniuk gets offended.  Wonder no longer:

Q: It's the apocalypse. You're allowed one weapon—what is it and why? —nflux

CP: One weapon? Can I get a machine gun with an endless supply of shells? Would you ask Susan Sontag this question? Joyce Carol Oates? What weapon did Grace Paley ask for?

Clearly, the answer is "A Bible," but he was either playing coy or doesn't know. 

He might also not know that Susan Sontag is dead.  The living Susan Sontag prolly woulda armed herself with Anne Leibovitz's deadly boring anecdotes about doing smack with the Rolling Stones and short-sheeting Jann Wenner's bed. 

Your pal called Joyce Carol Oates and she said "Paper!  More paper!  Wait, no.  A pen!  But a pen without paper..."  And then she trailed off into obscenities.

Grace Paley, reached in Vermont, said she'd gladly tear off one of Palahniuk's hypertrophied arms and finally put it to good use pummeling the postapocalyptic zombie armies.

So that's that.

Next time, we'll explore if Palahniuk could shit in a paper bag and sell it to fanboys, and, if so, would they still insist it didn't stink. 

The Cormac in Winter

I missed The Cormac Show, and from what I read I'm not going to knock myself out to see it. 

Jeff's take on McCarthy's appearance is customarily sane, although I would add that this is what happens when you ignore Nabokov's lead and answer questions more-or-less off-the-cuff instead of in writing, after countless undetectable revisions.  This makes sense: writers write, and we get what deserve when we force them to dance about architecture.

The man wrote Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, Suttree, The Road.  Unless he comes out thirteen feet tall and barking in tongues of fire, it's going to be a disappointment.  Same deal with anyone who ever had to wipe Faulkner's vomit off his brogans after a long night.

(Again) I hate myself for loving the The Road message board, but I still think spending a few minutes there is going to be more illuminating than the interview itself.  Here's one of my favorite posts:

The Boat

I thought the boat was from an organized navel group from some spanish-speaking country. Perhaps at the beginning of this apocalyptic time, there was evacuations from this southern shore spearheaded by some spanish-speaking navy.

As I read the story about the boat, I thought the father and son would take residence in the boat...surrounded by water they could fight off theives with their pistol and flare gun.

That's a completely different movie, but perfect-pitch Hollywood, you have to admit.

Think! (It Ain't Illegal Yet), or: The Fear of Being Eaten By a Sandwich

(A myself sandwich)

If anyone has a right to be bewildered by today's Cormac McCarthy appearance on Oprah, it's Jonathan Franzen.

There's no need to rehearse the Franzen/Oprah contretemps at length; in Franzen-meets-Peanuts terms, our man chose, against his own best instincts, to charge the football and had it pulled away from him at the last minute by Lucy/Oprah, as his momentum carried him in hilarious ass-over-teakettle fashion toward an undignified and rough landing.  Only it wasn't Oprah who pulled back the football--it was Franzen himself, donning an Oprah mask.

Honestly--switching metaphors--I can understand not wanting to come home from Bread Loaf with Oprah's lipstick on your collar.  The main problem was that Franzen decided on punkish purity after he'd already accepted the "honor," and so came out looking not just snobbish but ungrateful and disloyal.

Now along comes McCarthy, who not only accepted the Big O imprimatur on The Road but chose to sit for his "first television interview ever" on Oprah's show.  If Franzen hoped for High Art solidarity, then no such luck. J. probably should have bet on the quality of The Corrections against the deleterious effects of the Oprah brand, made a charming, stammering, Hugh-Grantish appearance on her show, and run away with the filthy lucre, giggling.

But we'll leave him alone for now, as the McCarthy appearance raises a couple interesting questions: Is McCarthy aware of The Secret?  And: Does Oprah realize, somewhere deep in her irregularly beating corporate heart, that The Road is a devastating critique and repudiation of The Secret's contemptible premise?