Of Gaga and Twlight

What happened here?

Anyway, last night, listening to the radio, I heard a song which I was later informed was Lady Gaga's "Teeth". Listening to the song, stuck by the odd rhythm of the beat (like an old gospel number) it also hit me that, with one or two alterations, this song could be the theme song for Bella of Twilight, particularly in light of her obsessive devotion to this guy who's really kind of a jerk ("My religion is you.")

"Show me your Teeth, Edward," she said.
"Sparkle Sparkle," he said as he glittered in the moonlight.

Why do I even care?

JPC

That's the way to do it

Mark Twain and his post-departure publishing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/books/10twain.html?ref=books

Be honest, the best thing about this is going to be the insults he couldn't get away with in life. Only in death does free speech exsist.

NPR yesterday had a talk about libel suits, saying that in this economy and with various other factors (including "THE INTERNET") libel suits are on the wain. No one's suing anyone anymore. Good or bad? Don't know quite yet.

JPC

My Next Reviews

JPC

Two New Pieces in CommonSense2.com

This month I have two new pieces in CommonSense2.com.

The first is a review of Alice Walker's poetry collection A Poem Travelled Down My Arm:
http://commonsense2.com/2010/07/book-reviews/a-poem-traveled-down-my-arm-by-alice-walker/
Alice Walker and I have had a troubled history (my review of her collection Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth is the only 100% negative review I have ever given), and so I found myself surprised when I enjoyed the new collection of poems. Indeed, I have great respect for Walker's recent work, which seems to be a return to form after a dry spell.

The second piece is titled "The McLaughlin Group (with Monica?)":
http://commonsense2.com/2010/07/cultural-criticism/the-mclaughlin-group-with-monica/
In which I attempt to figure out what Monica Crowley was put on the McLaughlin round table and beg Tony Blankley to come back.

JPC

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman finally gets a new outfit after 69 years. Well, you know how hard it is to find a good pair of shoes that match the dress...

JPC

New Projects

Working on a few new things which require my full attention and so I may be posting intermittently for a while. Having very little time what with running around, yet I shall have two new pieces in CommonSense2.com in the next issue and I am also planning four new pieces for the one after that, a double issue.

I'm looking into new things, new possibilities of publishing. I realize that I cannot keep publishing in just one place--I must expand my range as I writer.

As such, I may be coming and going. But, never fear, if I find something interesting, I'll let you know. I'll also keep posting links to new pieces when they appear.

JPC

A Postscript to Snarky

I must admit, I rather enjoyed writing that bit of nonsense. Once you open yourself up to the realm of the unimaginable phantasmagoria, it's really quite fun.

Reminded of Virginia Woolf, "It's really quite fun being mad. You have wonderful ideas, much more interesting then when you're sane."

Lewis Carroll as we know him, never existed. It's a pen name. It's Dodgson, his real name. There's a fascination with this "Lewis Carroll" figure, speculations on his sexuality and rumors of his dark, tormented personal life, kept hidden even from the most dedicated researchers. What was in those "missing pages" of his diaries? But we've gotten it all wrong. We shouldn't be obsessing over "Lewis Carroll" but instead we should be obsessing over Charles Dodgson.

The works of "Lewis Carroll" and Rev. Charles Dodgson are one and it is unfair to ignore the works of one while praising the other. The two are even intertwined--the routine spectical of mathamatics pops up in both Alice books and The Hunting of the Snark. There should be as much scholarly dedication to Dodgson's "serious" works (including Curiousa Mathematica, Euclid and His Modern Rivals and Symbolic Logic) as there has been to the fantastical Jabberwocky.

JPC

Snarky

I read with a small grain of salt,

a poem last night without fault

though it made no sense

I'm sure it's not coincidence

That Lewis Carroll authored the thingametault.

*

All of Snarks and Boojums last night

Resulting in Dreams quite afright

I covered my head

While I slept in my bed

to save myself from creatures of non-light.

*

No doubt Carroll is to blame

for this rambling, quite innane,

but the matter of fact

is I don't know where he's at

because Carroll isn't really his name.

*

Snarky Snarky Snark,

JPC

Updike's Archives

I now have a reason to look forward to the future--twenty years ahead, John Updike's first two unpublished early novels "Go Away" and "Home" will be made available to researchers via the Harvard's rare book and manuscript depository.

From the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/books/21updike.html

Also from the New York Times, a look at the opening page of the manuscript for Rabbit at Rest.
http://documents.nytimes.com/john-updike-at-work?ref=books

And the article which describes the states of "Go Away" and "Home", also via the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/books/21archive.html?ref=books

JPC

J. M. Coetzee scares me

It's not that I have anything against J. M. Coetzee, in fact, I think he's a wonderful man. The thing about J. M. Coetzee that scares me (aside from his almost total lack of a personal life, his robotic and unrevealing public persona) is that he looks amazingly like an uncle of mine.

Observe J. M. Coetzee's recent photograph on the back of his book, Slow Man:

Remove one or two of the wrinkles and you have my Uncle, whom I shall refer to as John. John and Coetzee are two entirely different people, from different backgrounds, and yet they appear almost identical. Where Coetzee cares about the environment, never eats meat, bicycles everywhere to keep in shape and only says as much as necessary, Uncle John doesn't care about the environment (he has a Hummer as his car of choice, I believe), he never bikes, he eats all the meat he can get onto his plate and will never shut up once he gets going (kind of like me).

I only realized the "lost sibling" aspect of their looks while I was browsing around my room, looking for a paperback of Coetzee's Disgrace. I found the paperback next to a stack of other Coetzee texts, including Diary of a Bad Year, Youth, Waiting for the Barbarians and Slow Man. It was on the back picture of Slow Man that I got the nasty shock.

Uncle John and I don't get along well. And now, my interactions with him have poisoned my interactions with Coetzee. I just can't get past the face. (I thought I was deeper than that)

JPC