I used to be "with it," but then they changed what "it" was. (Redux)

Except for the somewhat unwieldy format, I quite like Bookforum, so it's tough to keep the cynicism in check and not jump to awful conclusions when I hear that it's going to be "revamped."

But when I read this:

"We all felt that in order to really have an increased circulation, we needed to cover current affairs in some way...[w]e're waiting to see how it evolves."

I hear this:

MORE BRITNEY COVERAGE!!!

Perhaps literature is news that stays news, but money is good news, in a voice that rustles.

Your pal here is no MBA, but from the layman's position is hard to see how an increased focus on current events--that is, doing what every other book review outlet is doing--helps differentiate your publication to the point that circulation is substantially boosted.  (Could it be that, whether or not more readers rush to pick up the latest Bookforum, an increase in current events pieces opens up new sources of ad revenue?  I dunno.  Help me out here.)

Developing, as they say.

Leaving that aside, BF does have James Wolcott on Donald Barthelme available online, and it's worth the time.  Particularly here, where Wolcott is dead on the money:

Today, I would hazard (I’ve always wanted to hazard), the track marks of Barthelme's suave, subversive cunning are to be found less in postmod fiction—although David Foster Wallace’s dense foliage of footnotes suggests a Barthelmean undergrowth and George Saunders’s arcade surrealism has a runaway-nephew quality—than in the conscientiously oddball, studiedly offhand, hiply recherché, mock-anachronistic formalism of McSweeney’s, The Believer, The Crier, and related organs of articulate mumblecore.

Yep.  And all those outlets, whatever their various charms, stand as cautionary tales for those who would try to ape their heroes too closely.

The re-publication of Not-Knowing gets short shrift from Wolcott here, but I picked up a not-really-used copy of the first edition in Missoula years ago for $4, and I've found it valuable, if variable in quality.  The title essay is quite good, not to mention hilarious on the subject of postmodernism, and the interviews can be mined for aphorisms, for those inclined.  (Padgett Powell, I found, leans heavily on Don B. quotes as pedagogical tools, and he's not wrong.)  The transcript of a symposium between Barthelme, Gass, Paley, and Walker Percy is also here, and interesting.

But I'd be content to just pick around for the humor, as there are a clutch of lighter pieces, pulled from The New Yorker and elsewhere, that deploy the delightful Pop mix found in any Barthelme short with perhaps a more down-to-earth sensibility.

McSweeney's fans should see Barthelme's review of Superman III, "Earth Angel," in particular.  Barthelme borrows the mock Q&A format of one of my favorite stories--"Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel"--and kills the movie softly by taking it seriously, and then again not-at-all seriously at the same time:

Q. Do we really need Superman III?
A. Clearly not.
Q. Yet it's here. Must be a response to something, some kind of need....
A. Financial exegencies undiscussable on the plane of the cultural slash aesthetic.
Q. To which we will stalwartly adhere. Would you like to be able to fly?
A. I've always wanted to fly.  In the air.
Q. A basic human yearn. To fly.
A. A conquering of dailyness. Whoosh!

It's true that this sort of thing has been done many times over since, and also that its practitioners have come in for some sanctimonious tsk-tsking for wasting their talents on snark.

But let's be serious.  Superman III exists for no reason other than simple pleasure, a cheap and brief conquering of "dailyness."  Who's to say that that simple pleasure can't be found in some wit snapping Supe's too-tight underpants?

Comments

[REllis]

You, if anyone, could answer this question, then: Why does B. feel earnest and smart and fresh, still, while McSwy et al come off as cute and self-satisfied? Is it just my bad attitude? Because it could be. Perhaps it's all context and history and baggage. I would appreciate the Rake take on it.

[ed]

Okay, I fessed up here months ago to owning SUPERGIRL on DVD. Is this your sneaky way of getting me to fess up on SUPERMAN III as well?

[Maud]

Heya Rake. My understanding, which is wholly anecdotal: there will be more current coverage of political and other nonfiction books. I don't think Britney's in the cards for Bookforum.

[Rake]

Taking these in reverse order:

Miz Maud: I believe you. I was more or less sending up my worst fears and perhaps being a bit of a smartass. That said, I still fail to see how falling back to the pack--i.e., "doing what every other book review outlet is doing"--is a winning strategy for any publication.

There is the chance that they'll do it well, and therefore I'm reserving judgment. But if there's ever a BF review of "Britney & Eschatology," you owe me a Coke.

RE: It would take more thinking and space for me to tease out a decent answer for you, but the fact that Barthelme was doing his Pop & Academy pastiche while such a thing was still considered to be in the avant-garde of American fiction explains a lot. As DFW once explained, at length, all the irony and parodic joy displayed by Don B. et al. has long been absorbed and regurgitated a hundred times, such that now everything is Pop and self-referential. Today's practitioners are apt to be repeating the same jokes, and if you combine that with a strange sense of self-satisfaction in doing so, you get some pretty off-putting material.

Ed: If you want to get anything off your chest, you're always welcome to a stool in this bar. But be warned: If you start cheerleading for Superman IV, we're going to stage an intervention. That one was awful.

[Imani]

As far as ad revenue goes I figured "Bookforum" didn't have any staff devoted to it as the advertisements (for the most part) were strangely disconnected from content. They seemed to be taken wholesale from "Artforum"; I've never read it but the ads are typically for some kind of visual arts book.

That was a shame since literary magazines are the only publications where I deliberately pay attention to them.