The Pendarvis Art of Living

Yesterday I got a promotional email from Square Books, saying that Gin Phillips would be on the Thacker Mountain radio show. And I was like, "Gin Phillips, Gin Phillips. Don't I know her? Did I maybe do some readings with her in Atlanta?" Digging deep into the "blog" archives, which must now substitute for my memory, I realized I was thinking of Hollis Gillespie. Now, Gin Phillips and Hollis Gillespie... are those names really so much alike? No. But I understand why my brain would think so, even if it had not been famously zapped in an unfortunate incident from the recent past. Anyway! Before I thought to check the "blog," I decided to do an "internet" search of my name alongside the name of Gin Phillips, hoping to confirm what turned out to be a false recollection. AND! The good old A.I. robot that pops up unbeckoned whenever I search for something helpfully informed me that I was the author of the books THE PENDARVIS ART OF LIVING, YOUR BODY IS CALLING YOU (see also), and, of course, my renowned novel CIGARETTE BOY. You are perhaps unfamiliar with what I laughingly call my work, so let me explain that none of those books exist. YET!

Witold Gombrowicz Is Like Jim Gaffigan

Time and time again we have established that I am wrong about everything. Here, let me give you a recent example! So, remember when I said I remembered going to Square Books and... wait. Please remind yourself that my brain was zapped by mysterious forces just a couple of years ago. But remember when I said I had seen a version of THE ILIAD blurbed by Emily Wilson but not translated by her? That can't be the case. Because I went to Square Books yesterday and saw with my own eyes Emily Wilson's translation of THE ILIAD, which I had convinced myself did not exist. And why would she blurb an ILIAD when she had a fresh new ILIAD of her own? I said to Mevelyn... wait! Let me tell you about Mevelyn. Mevelyn is from Cuba. She is a great bookseller. Case in point, she has forced me to buy a lot of Alejo Carpentier with her hypnotic powers. She tells a good ghost story. She knows everything about books! You can ask her about the different translations of DON QUIXOTE, for example, and she'll point out all their strengths and weaknesses. I always hope that Mevelyn will be working when I visit Square Books so I can hear a good ghost story or a nightmare she had about Karl Marx. Anyway, I grasped Emily Wilson's translation of THE ILIAD in my wizened paws and I says to Mevelyn, I says, "Hey! Mevelyn! Wasn't there a recent version of THE ILIAD with a blurb by Emily Wilson, but she didn't translate it? I feel like I'm going crazy!" So it sounds familiar to Mevelyn, too! She feels like she saw it recently. So we stand there a long time trying to figure out what the hell we are talking about. We are having one of those folies à deux that people enjoy so much. Anyway! When I got home, I realized what I had seen was a new translation of THE AENEID for which Emily Wilson wrote the introduction. Not a blurb! An introduction! Not THE ILIAD! THE AENEID! The important thing is that I had a coupon, so I was able to get Emily Wilson's translation of THE ILIAD for free, just about. That's the thing! Get yourself a "Constant Reader Number" at Square Books! Then you too will be able to grab an almost-free book once in a while. And so it came to pass that THE ILIAD is my current "nighttime book" and the DIARY of Witold Gombrowicz is my current "daytime book." I have reached the point in the diary where Gombrowicz has begun to attack himself, sotto voce, the way Jim Gaffigan does in his standup act. You know, Jim Gaffigan will tell a joke and then he'll switch to a soft, high-pitched, almost strangled voice, pretending to be an audience member, questioning his own premise. Is that a good description of what Jim Gaffigan does? No? How the hell would you know? Anyway, now Witold Gombrowicz is doing what Jim Gaffigan does... in diary form! It's like when Milhouse said that ALF was back in pog form. Everything is like when Milhouse said ALF was back in pog form.

Feelin' Ancient

Am I going to read THE ILIAD? I'm afraid it appears likely. Was it Emily Wilson who got me on this ancient kick? I read her translation of THE ODYSSEY and her biography of Seneca, and then six plays by Seneca that she translated, which ruined me for reading things that were not ancient. I've even read ancient things I haven't bothered to tell you about on the "blog," such as Josephus. Josephus! And before I took up Witold Gombrowicz for the Million Dollar Book Club, Tacitus was my daytime book. Sitting around reading Tacitus in the broad daylight like some kind of animal! And I guess I'll pick up where I left off if I ever finish Gombrowicz. Okay, I'll be right back. I need to do a little research. All right, I'm back. I have confirmed a nagging feeling. It wasn't Emily Wilson who got me into all this. It was Kirk Douglas! ("Click" here for details.) Sorry, Emily Wilson! Anyway! I guess you're wondering where all this ILIAD crap is coming from, though. Well, remember when I decided to become interested in Simone Weil? I don't suppose any of us will ever forget it! So I'm going around learning stuff about Simone Weil and I see that she wrote a famous essay about THE ILIAD. So I get hold of that and I'm like, "Uh-oh! Here we go again!" And do I want to get my Robert Fagles translation of THE ILIAD off the shelf? Well, hell, no. Didn't I read it already? Or part of it? Did I ever finish it? Also, it's on a shelf behind a glass door with latches at both the top and bottom. That's a lot of work! The bottom latches, in addition, have some stuff piled in front of them, such as my blood pressure machine. Oh! Speaking of my blood pressure machine, let me come clean about something. I've told you many times that I stopped reading old comic books. I still say that is true. However! I do have a gigantic hardcover DC "omnibus edition" of comics that I currently sample while relaxing for five minutes before blood pressure time. This sturdy volume has just the kind of spine I need for laying out the book flat on the dining room table, where the medical task in question is undertaken. So yesterday, or the day before, I think, I saw a representation of the DC comics character the Spectre, and... here... allow me to quote an email I sent to Adam Muto on the subject: "I was looking at a DC comic book from 1989 and it had the Spectre in it, and he was really ripped! I was like... he's a ghost! Has he been going to the gym? You're the only person I could think of to tell." I did not add... "Or should I say RIPped?" because I thought such wordplay would make Adam sad and disappointed. Then I poked around on the "internet" because I was afraid "ripped" wasn't the right term. I spent a lot of time on "web" sites dedicated to parsing the difference between being "ripped" or "shredded" or "jacked" or "swole." But we're getting off the subject! Are we? Well, I recalled seeing a newish translation of THE ILIAD at Square Books. And given the fact that I'm going to have lunch with Tom Franklin one day soon, I just know I'll stop by on the way and pick it up. I can see the future! This ILIAD wasn't translated by Emily Wilson, but it had a blurb from Emily Wilson. [Wrong! - ed.] Now, as a person who has both given and received blurbs, I know that blurbs aren't really worth spit. Except for the time Lauren Graham blurbed one of my books! That one counted!

Events Spiral Out of Control

What's a typical day like for me, you ask? What? You didn't ask? Who are you? Where am I? Most days I sit around looking up stuff like how many calories in an apple. Yesterday was different. I went out to see Beth Ann Fennelly onstage at the launch event for her latest book THE IRISH GOODBYE. I got into town a little bit early because the tradition is to have a quick drink at City Grocery Bar before the reading, at least that has always been my personal understanding. And look, I don't make it out to the bar as much since the famous unpleasantness of almost two years ago. So I was disinclined to miss out on my special treat. But get this! City Grocery Bar was closed for a private party! That happens from time to time, enraging me. It can strike at any moment! The private party, not the rage. Although that can also strike at any moment. There is no warning for either one. Anyway, Bill Boyle arrived early as well, so, with a little more than half an hour to go, we departed the venue (Off Square Books) and walked around the corner to Proud Larry's, which even the bartender there referred to as the "backup" for literary whatever the hell it is. Life? Bill didn't want a drink. He was just keeping me company and keeping tradition alive. So important! That's what I said to the golden-brown liquid in my glass so it would know it was not being consumed in vain. Anyway, we had a nice talk (Bill and I, that is, not the glass and I, though we got along great too) and then we moseyed back over at 5:31 PM, just one minute after the event's official start time. And let me tell you something: we couldn't even get in! Not only was every chair occupied, the rear of the store was packed with a standing-room-only crowd AND there were people kind of smushed up in the doorway and spilling out onto the sidewalk. Well! I wasn't really surprised by the turnout, especially for Beth Ann, though I have long assumed that literature is dead. An unsuspecting Dr. Theresa, meanwhile, was on her way, having just finished teaching a class, and I had to tell her to come pick me up at Proud Larry's instead. Please be assured I had already purchased my copy of THE IRISH GOODBYE upon my arrival. Anyway, back around the corner we went and I sat at the bar with Bill again and ordered some to-go food for Dr. Theresa and myself... our go-to order at Proud Larry's, yes, our to-go go-to, that's right, or our go-to to-go would probably be a more proper way to put it, two grilled chicken salads with the lemon-red wine vinaigrette. And, if we're really feeling daring, we cheat and split a quesadilla. And boy were we feeling daring last night! And look, you're not going to believe this incredible tale, but I had already ordered the quesadilla before looking at my phone to discover that Dr. Theresa had texted her request for a quesadilla. Yes, you read that right! That's the kind of magic that thirty years of marriage will get for you. What a night. What a world. What times we live in.

I'm Like Ladyhawke

Above, that's Adam Muto's tribute to my beloved characters Frowny 'n' Smiley! But more of that anon. First! I know you are so interested in how I switch from my daytime book to my nighttime book. My process, if you will. How do I stop reading one book during the day and start reading another book at night? Well, it's just like in the movie LADYHAWKE! Except instead of turning into a wolf as Rutger Hauer does with the setting of the sun, I put aside my daytime book and pick up my nighttime book! It's just that simple, folks. And before we go on, I'd like to mention that I repeatedly brought up LADYHAWKE in the Adventure Time writers room, and yet, somehow, we never stole anything from LADYHAWKE to use in the show, no matter how much I begged and cried. All right! But that's not the point. There isn't a point. But I'm sure you remember how sometimes my daytime book will blur into my nighttime book... like the daytime book will mention Gogol and then the nighttime book will mention Gogol, and so on (please "click" for a full catalog)... anyway! Yesterday, as my daytime reading was coming to a close, I read (in THE LOST STEPS by Alejo Carpentier, translated by Adrian Nathan West) "... the grave-faced toucan flaunts his breastplate..." at which point I opened up my nighttime book (a scholarly analysis of the roots of oral epic poetry) to see, of all things, "Rade's sword strikes fire from the captain's breastplate." Now, what does this mean? Nothing. I guess breastplate is an everyday word. Personally, I don't think about breastplates too much. But what is the universe telling me? To buy a breastplate? I don't know why I am reminded of a recent incident... yes I do. Anyway, I was at Square Books and I saw a new volume of previously unpublished Dream Songs by John Berryman. And I was like, well, he's been dead a long time. I asked Richard, who was standing there, whether they were any good or just some garbage someone swept up from John Berryman's floor and Richard said, and I do think this is an exact quotation, "Let's do the test!" And he opened the book at random and stuck his finger in and read the lines he found that way and they were good and so I bought the book. That's how Richard gets you! And this is related too, as I am sure you will agree: tonight, if you watch the special THE ELEPHANT on Adult Swim, you will see, in the commercial breaks on your ordinary television set, some extremely short "Frowny 'n' Smiley" episodes by me. So... when we were in one meeting during the making of THE ELEPHANT, Pen happened to mention that it was the 100th anniversary of the exquisite corpse, an art-making game which inspired the structrue of THE ELEPHANT. So, anyway! Today, in the New York Times, there is an article about the 100th anniversary of surrealism, and it includes the origin story of the exquisite corpse! Isn't that something? Today of all days? And I just thought of another thing: Matthew Broderick appears in both LADYHAWKE and ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE! Okay, I am going to buy a breastplate.

Book Junk

In the New York Times they are always grilling people like "What books are on your bedside table?" I have a stack of books on the bedside table but I don't think the New York Times could figure out anything about me by inventorying them. I mainly use them as a kind of pedestal. And then there's a book on top, which is whatever book I currently read in bed. But the ones underneath it have been sitting there for so long that as far as I know they may have fused into a single volume. But! Something interesting happened the other day when I started reading the giant big huge enormous big large big dragon book by Joe Hill. I found that THE PENGUIN BOOK OF SPIRITUAL VERSE, which has long capped the mighty pedestal of books, was too small and flimsy to serve as proper direct support for the hulking dragon book. "Where the hell am I going to put this book of spiritual verse?" I said to myself blasphemously. This story just gets better and better. Well, I moved it to the little table that sits alongside my favorite chair. And that provoked me to do something I haven't done in years, I guess: open it up. And what do you think I saw? An owl? You're right! And it was in a poem I've read before... haven't I? "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake. And yes, of course, I've read it before. But I guess I haven't read it in at least 14 years, as William Blake has not until now featured in my long list of books with owls in them, begun all that time ago. Or... could it be I just never finished reading this poem before? It's longer than I remembered! My memory of it gives out pretty early, with "A Horse misusd upon the Road/ Calls to Heaven for Human blood"... I feel like every time I get to that part, I kind of sit there and nod thoughtfully for a while... and then do I shut the book? Anyhow, it turns out that a little later on we have "The Owl that calls upon the Night/ Speaks the Unbelievers fright"... a line that does not sound familiar to me at all. I'll tell you something else strange! Are you excited? And have I actually told you anything strange? Well, I noticed for the first time that this Penguin paperback is signed by its editor, Kaveh Akbar. Maybe that's not strange. I don't know why, but I never thought of a Penguin paperback being signed... maybe because the author is almost always dead. Also, I bought it new at Square Books, on an ordinary shelf, not specially marked... and I do always think of Penguin paperbacks as something like... cans of Vienna sausage? I don't expect the person who shepherded those Vienna sausages through the process to sign the can! Although, if someone personally selected each sausage, and nudged them all perfectly and snugly together, which would be analagous to Kaveh Akbar's fine work here... I am too tired to follow this line of thought. In a final bit of book news, the City of Oxford, Mississippi, has, for mysterious reasons, suddenly rescheduled its Christmas parade! The Christmas parade will now occur at roughly the same location and time as my event with Ace tomorrow night! I guess we'll finally find out who's more popular: Ace Atkins or Santa Claus.

Everybody Wants to Read the Book

Hey! I'll be interviewing Ace Atkins about his brand new action-packed novel EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD at Off Square Books on Tuesday at the usual time. Why am I telling you this? Is it because I think the "blog" is a great place to advertise? Hell no. It's because way back in June of 2024 I read the first draft of the manuscript, which had the acronym OWLS in it, a fact with which I tantalized you mercilessly. So now I can finally reveal the source! Which is, as I may not have made clear, EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD by Ace Atkins. I just double checked the beautiful hardcover first edition and confirmed that OWLS is still there, much as Francis Scott Key once excitedly remarked about a flag. I bet that's a big relief. Unlike Dr. Theresa's birthday murder book, in which OWL stood for "Olympic-Wallawa Lineament," Ace's OWLS stands for (I don't think this is a spoiler) "Older, Wiser, Livelier Souls." I wondered: was this something Ace made up? I guess not! I found, for example, an OWLS program in Jones County, Iowa, where "events include snowshoeing, cross country skiing, a hike to discover skunk cabbage... [and] several evening hikes to Codfish Hollow Hill Prairie." Sounds great! I'd include a "hyperlink," but I know it would just become a zombie "link" one day, and anyway, the hike to discover skunk cabbage took place in 2022. I'm sorry to get your hopes up!

Hand Selling

Well, Dr. Theresa wanted a book about murderers for her birthday, so I was like, "Okay!" And then I impersonated the famous "shrugging emoji." To be clear, it wasn't just any book on the subject, it was a particular one that she had heard Richard Howorth and Megan Abbott talking up back when I did that Q&A with Megan at Square Books. That's what they call "hand selling" in the book business! So we went to Square Books and I got her the book and then she was driving the car and I was sitting in the passenger seat with whatever look I usually have on my face, and I said something like, "This is what you wanted for your birthday!" And, spurred by my ever-curious childlike wonder, I opened it up completely at random to "They call it the OWL. The Olympic-Wallowa Lineament. Nobody knows what it is." Well! That would have seemed extra creepy to me (especially nobody knowing what it is and the owl jumping out at me in all caps like that) if birthday magic had not preemptively counterbalanced it. I was given cause to recall another OWL - an acronym, that is, standing for something else entirely - from a manuscript I read in June [correction: June of 2024 (!) - ed.] but cannot address here until December. I hope you can hold out!

Winning

The other evening I went to City Grocery Bar to knock one back with Tom Franklin, but I stopped by Square Books on the way and got the new edition of CHOCTAW TALES, compiled by Tom Mould and Rae Nell Vaughn. There was a reading scheduled for the very same time that I was supposed to knock one back with Tom Franklin. So, to be clear, though I did not attend the reading, I did get the book, and that’s something, right? It’s not nothing! Get off my back! Anyway, the book was lying there on the kitchen counter a day or two later and Dr. Theresa said, “This looks interesting,” and I thought she was right! It did look interesting! Who was so smart as to pick up such an interesting book? Me? Wow, I’m great! Such were a few of my amazing thoughts. So a little later I opened the book at random and I think you know where this is going. Have I become too predictable? Has the spark gone out of our relationship, dear reader? In any case, I opened right to a story about an owl and a buzzard arguing over which of them was going to have the most children, which struck me as a pretty funny argument, but I’m not an owl or a buzzard or J.D. Vance. So the owl sits in a cherry tree and the buzzard knocks the owl on its ass with a dead branch... forgive me, the book is downstairs, I’m paraphrasing from memory. Also, I feel I’ve been saying “ass” on the “blog” a lot more frequently. Sorry about that, but not too long ago my brain went a little bit sideways. (See also.) Anyway, the buzzard wins and gets to have more children, if you call that winning. I left the “Animal Tales” section but kept finding owls anyway, including one really good one in the story of a mysterious old woman who chopped off a man’s head and fooled a bear and a couple of wildcats but anyway she turned out to be an owl and nobody saw that coming! I do care about things other than noticing which books have owls in them, but I can’t remember what those things are anymore, can you? Please help me.

Incurious

Well, there's this series of books I don't really like that much. I guess the first one was okay, but as I think back, it was just sort of a novelty, maybe. And the second one I didn't enjoy at all. This hit me recently when I saw a new hardcover in Square Books the other day, a third book in the series, hot off the presses... and friends, I bought it! Why? It may have something to do with a problem in my brain. Oh boy, I've thought of a few more points to touch upon before we get to the gist, if there is one, which there almost certainly is not. Yes there is. But no one will like it. I recommended the first book in the series to Dr. Theresa recently when she was looking for something to read in bed. It was only some days later, when I saw the third in the series at Square Books, that I truly considered whether or not I had actually "enjoyed" the first... which I had, up to a point. But enough to recommend it to Dr. Theresa - a person to whom I have made sacred vows - to read in bed? Well, it was too late! It was already happening! Something else you may not be wondering... Jack, you may not be wondering, isn't it very seldom that you "post" something negative... admitting that you don't like a book, for example? Aren't you afraid of hurting the author's feelings? Well, I'll tell you. No. Because I know you! And you don't exist! And even if you do exist, which you don't, you never "click" on my "hyperlinks," so you will never, ever know what books I am talking about. I know what you're thinking! You're thinking, okay, this third book - which you bought for full price in hardcover - in a series you don't care for: does it have an owl in it? You bet your ass it does! It's a stuffed owl with "incurious glass eyes." I am sure you will recall the "cheap glass eye" an owl has in a John D. MacDonald novel. Or if you want to get fancy, you can think of a stuffed owl whose glass eyes are "knowing topazes" in a fancy Italian novel... or James Joyce, whose stuffed owl has a "clear melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze." One day we'll have to write a monograph on approaches to owl eyes in literature. Apparently, there are two. Oh, and the owl in my current book is just one of a series of unfortunate stuffed creatures with "incurious glass eyes"... to quote: "Crows, foxes, rabbits, owls, just about every form of wildlife." Oh, really? Was there a walrus? A walrus with incurious glass eyes? Come on!

The History of Literature

Never thought I'd run across the phrase "She was going to turn me into an owl one time" in an Elmore Leonard novel, but I did... twice! The second time, it's "gonna" instead of "going to," the kind of distinction you notice only if you've wasted a good portion of your life cataloging every time a book has an owl in it. Anyway, after I read that (in KILLSHOT), I got in bed and came by coincidence to the part of THE ODYSSEY where the guys get turned into pigs. That's the history of literature for you, from THE ODYSSEY to Elmore Leonard: people getting turned into owls or pigs. What else have I been reading lately? Some Jack Kerouac journals that McNeil gave me for my birthday. He (Kerouac, not McNeil) is struggling to finish writing his novel THE TOWN AND THE CITY... which made me recall one of Dr. Theresa's former bosses, who told me that her favorite Kerouac novel was THE TOWN AND THE CITY, so I marched right down to Square Books and bought a paperback of it and stuck it on a shelf and never read it. Well, after reading some of those journal entries, I took THE TOWN AND THE CITY off the shelf, opened it, and the receipt fell out... May 27, 2013. And the pages of the book had turned brown with age! Look. That's not necessary. Once, when Dr. Theresa was still just an undergrad, we went to her Latin teacher's house, where fruit punch was served! And her Latin teacher brought out a book from the 15th century for us to pass around, and the pages were as white as snow! So my guess is that the people at Harcourt were like, "What are we going to do with this cheap paper we have lying around? Let's give it to the beatniks, they like that kind of crap." Related: there's a blurb from Johnny Depp on the back cover - ?! - in which the word "Kerouac" is misspelled... with two c's! "Yeah, I saw it. The beatniks won't care." (See also: the cheap glue used by Scribner.)

Recent Developments

Having watched a couple of different movies about Odysseus lately, I've learned something important: Odysseus was just about naked a lot of the time. Last year, Dr. Theresa and I went on a big kick of watching Biblical epics and other movies set in ancient times. One we really liked starred Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus. At the end, I lugged out my hardcover translation by Robert Fagles, like, did such-and-such really happen in the poem? And if I recall correctly, it did, whatever it was I got so worked up about. So then the other day I watched an Italian movie, which I had recorded from TCM, with Kirk Douglas as Odysseus, and it was a lot of fun. They had a good Cyclops. Then I was like, "I should read THE ODYSSEY again. But I am too old and tired to drag out this Robert Fagles edition so many times (twice), and my gnarled, elderly hands and arms like twigs are too frail to hold it up in bed at night. But hey! If memory serves, wasn't there a recent translation I should check out?" So yesterday I went by Square Books and found the recent translation of which I was thinking, by Emily Wilson. It was in paperback, and I bought it with money. Recent! I checked the copyright page and it came out in 2018. That still seems recent to me. When did that happen? When did seven years begin to feel like nothing, really? Like, when I was 16, I didn't go around thinking, "I was recently nine!" But as you get older, things that happened longer and longer ago seem more and more recent. You'll find out! And I suppose, when you're thinking about THE ODYSSEY, everything is recent. But what I really want to say is Athena is there right out of the gate. To mix sports metaphors, she comes out swinging! And you know what I was thinking: "She famously hangs out with owls!" And yes, it isn't too long before she is described as "the owl-eyed goddess." What's more, she "flew away like a bird, up through the smoke." And what did Telemachus think about that? "Watching her go, he was amazed." No kidding! Oh, Telemachus, you crazy kid, when will you ever learn?

Awful Stuff

Content warning! This "post" will have some gory junk in it, mostly compliments of Mr. William Shakespeare, with some help from Tom Wolfe. Okay! First of all, I am finally reading that paperback of HENRY VI, Part 1 I got at Square Books. All right! Pin a medal on me. Oh! Before you pin a medal on me, I was casually glancing through the "blog" for previous Henry VI tidbits, and I found one that says his favorite activity was sleeping. I get it! I really do. But I want to talk about this guy Talbot. A pal of his gets mortally wounded and Talbot asks him, "One of thy eyes and thy cheek's side struck off?" Which is a funny thing to ask a person in that position. Like, what's the guy supposed to say, am I right? Come on! Get it together, Talbot! You know, it's the same thing that happens to Chuck Yeager at the end of THE RIGHT STUFF, both the movie and the book. I mean to say that his face catches on fire after he ejects from his plummeting aircraft. Don't worry, folks, unlike Talbot's friend Salisbury, he's fine! But a detail they leave out of the movie is that after he hits the ground, the kid who finds him vomits all over the place because old Chuck's not looking so good. I wonder why they left that out of the movie! Getting back to Talbot, he's real upset, you see, about how dirty they've done his pal. He's mad in particular at Joan of Arc and her buddy the Dauphin, and he vows to get 'em! Get 'em good! "Your hearts I'll stamp out with my horse's heels and make a quagmire of your mingled brains." Holy cow! Mingled brains! He's going to mingle their brains all up! What! It's going to be brain soup when he gets through with them! Just horrible, as promised. Well, the guy is upset, like I was telling you. Later, though, a French lady calls Talbot a "weak and writhled shrimp." Ha ha! Writhled! Ouch! Ooh la la! Zut alors! Anyway, okay, Shakespeare, you've got me hooked! What's up next with this crazy crew of lovable lunkheads?

Orange Vinyl Spider-Man Sequel

I finished reading THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES but no I didn’t. Because you get to the end of the first book and then you have to – by law! – read the next volume, which is called INTO THE MILLENNIUM, or, I suppose, THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES: INTO THE MILLENNIUM. Either way, it sounds like a Spider-Man sequel. I need to get over to Square Books and order it up! Meanwhile, the Million Dollar Book Club is working on THE RIGHT STUFF. And here’s what I noticed! Wally Schirra, one of the Mercury astronauts, is a real prankster. Like, he has a little box and tells people he caught a mongoose in it. Then when they try to reach in and pet it, well, it jumps at them like one of those snakes out of a peanut can. You know those snakes. Wally Schirra’s mongoose is some kind of furry sock on a spring. And that made me remember my short story collection MOVIE STARS, when a character goes to an auction and tries to buy a novelty mongoose in a box, operating on the same principle. I got out the catalog from the auction of Bob Hope's personal effects, which I actually attended, and confirmed that Bob’s mongoose box, as pictured in the aforementioned catalog, appears to professionally assembled, whereas Tom Wolfe sure made it sound as if the mongoose box was something Wally Schirra thought up and slapped together himself. I think that’s an accurate memory of my reading experience. But the book is downstairs by the bed and I don’t care enough to go get it. Then I started imagining whimsical fancies, such as, maybe Wally Schirra gave Bob his very own homemade mongoose box! Wouldn’t that be something? It doesn’t seem overwhelmingly plausible, really. Although I’m sure Bob Hope hung out with the Mercury astronauts at some point. Nor does it seem plausible, though, that Wally Schirra was manufacturing his own trick mongoose boxes when there were plenty of trick mongoose boxes, apparently, in the nation’s many novelty emporiums from coast to coast. Maybe Tom Wolfe got this one thing wrong! Unless! What if Wally Schirra saw a novelty mongoose box in a store and thought, "I could make this myself for half the price!"? I guess we'll never know. Speaking of stuff we'll never know, I noticed again that the Bob Hope auction catalog wasn’t too heavy on provenance, which reminded me that I wanted to check it, and not for the first time, to see if I could find a clue (I couldn’t) about what cartoonist made these clever Bob Hope caricatures I bought at the auction. When Quinn came to town, I was like, “Look, this guy made pictures of Bob Hope as if rendered by Goya… and, uh… [trying to think of some names of other artists]” And Quinn was like, “Are these supposed to look like Bob Hope?” And I was like… “!” Because of course! Why would Bob Hope have these hanging in his office if… and my voice, as well as my thoughts, trailed off as Quinn stood there with a doubtful look on her face. So let’s get back to THE RIGHT STUFF! As I texted Megan with photographic proof, I still have an orange vinyl 45 RPM record with recordings from the actual Mercury space flights. It came with my G.I. Joe space capsule, the interior of which glowed in the dark. I got scared and thought it was a ghost! Give me a break, I was three years old. (Speaking of Megan Abbott and Square Books [see above], I’ll be “in conversation” with Megan about her new book EL DORADO DRIVE on August 13. I wouldn’t mention it so early, but I just started reading it and on page 4 [of the galley, anyway] there’s a “bird crying in the night.” As a review of the owl-spotting portion of the “blog” will remind you, we have given much thought to the matter, and just because a bird cries in the night, that does not make the bird an owl. Maybe it’s just an upset bird. I’m not worried! There are plenty more pages to come that might have a definite owl in them.) But I really came here to report about THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, didn’t I? I think it’s going to end up being JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS length. And contrary to my advice (usually about Thomas Mann), which is, essentially, read the first 200-400 pages and then you’ll be hooked, I was really bopping along with TMWQ for, oh, let’s say 200 pages… then I hit a real dry spell until page 630 (though, miner-like, I uncovered, here and there, random chunks of boldly glittering sarcasm that made it worth the trouble). So you have to get over a very big hump in the middle. Can you handle a 400-page hump? (Remember, this is just the first volume I’m talking about.) But when I got to page 630 I think I said out loud, “Things are starting to happen!” On page 630. Then the book was over not many pages later. Well, it was and it wasn’t.

Memory Tricks

So, a little while ago, I was at Square Books and they had different books by Susan Minot stacked everywhere. I asked Richard, who owns the joint, what gives! Richard says to me, he says, Susan Minot is coming to town. Now, I did a little research, which I'm generally against, and this must have happened way back in October, though my guess would have been sooner, like March. Bear in mind for the remainder of the "post" how bad my memory is. Anyway, I picked up a book of Minot's called MONKEYS, a title I have always liked. There used to be a lot more monkey content on the "blog." What happened? When did monkeys lose their magic? Answer: they didn't. Maybe it was you! What was I saying? Oh! So I had been meaning to read a Susan Minot book for about 40 years. The way I remembered it... and I texted Tom Franklin to make sure... to make sure he was there, first of all. I was wondering if his presence in my memory was hallucinatory, as I recalled him playing an advisory role much like Elvis does in the film TRUE ROMANCE. Anyway! It was some time in the 1980s, and Tom Franklin and I were looking at Susan Minot's author photo in a magazine. Newspaper? Magazine. And we - aspiring writers at the time, to put it mildly - got in our heads that her book looked interesting and she looked nice and we could very probably be best friends with her if we drove several hours to wherever the article said she was reading. Jackson? New Orleans? I'm going to guess Jackson, Mississippi, because New Orleans would have been too easy, as I picture us standing in downtown Mobile at the time. Jackson would have been more of a quest. Jackson, Mississippi! The mere name sparks the imagination. No it doesn't. The end of the story is that we didn't go. And forty years later, here I am, finally reading a Susan Minot book. And I'm only on page 60, and there have already been, I would say, 10-14 owls in it. That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It sure sounds like Susan Minot must have beaten the previous owl record, a tie between Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather. But not so fast! Hold it right there, chum! So, there is an "owl room" in this book. And some kids go in there and play an owl game of their own creation, which counts as one owl. A couple of pages later, there is a cake of brown soap shaped as an owl. That's two. Here's where it gets complicated! Are you getting excited? So, in this "owl room" are various kinds of owls. Some are described as being singular: "a hollow brass owl," for example. Other owls are multiple: "two china owls with flowers" or... and here's where you have to pay attention... "owl engravings." But how many owl engravings? And how many owls are represented in each owl engraving? Nobody knows! Possibly, not even Susan Minot herself knows! In any case, the owl room contains, at a bare mininum, eight owls. Oh boy, this is just the kind of "post" I love! However! By my usual method of counting "how many owls there are in a book," I would say there are 1. The owl figures in the owl room. 2. The owl game. 3. The soap shaped like an owl. That brings Susan Minot in at three owls! Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather remain undefeated! Wow, I'm just thinking of all the controversy this "post" is going to generate among people who enjoy counting owls as much as I do!

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

I'm sure some of you, if you existed, would be wondering about McNeil and why he hasn't bothered much with his bits lately... specifically, his "Li'l Bogie Bits," which is what we call it when he throws us a couple of bones based on the 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart he has been reading. Well, here's what happened: he thought he had left the book somewhere and lost it. Maybe in another state of the union, I think? But then he found it at home under a pile of... unspecified stuff. Of course, Freud would say that McNeil just doesn't care about his "Li'l Bogie Bits" anymore, so he effectively hid the book from himself. But Freud would be wrong! Speaking of Freud (and don't worry, we'll get back to the promised bits), McNeil told me he's reading SYNCHRONICITY by Carl Jung. I know what you're going to say! Freud isn't Jung. Well, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. All I know is I can't think of one without the other, like the two great flavors in a Reese's peanut butter cup. Like, when Freud and Jung were arguing that time and there was an inexplicable explosion in a nearby bookcase. I think I have that story right. And that reminds me of another story! I made it into a chapter of SOUR BLUEBERRIES, my novel that no longer exists on this planet. So I think I can quote it here and no one will care. And this is a true story, and I didn't even change Leslie's real actual name to protect her innocence: "That made him think of the time he and Leslie were arguing about Kubrick and Mike Nichols on New Year’s Eve and there was a loud bang from the other room and everybody ran in and saw that the oaken bookcase with all the film books on it had cleaved itself down the middle in despair and the film books were in a pile on the floor." Okay. What was I saying? Oh yeah, and then there was the time that Freud and Jung were on a train, I think, right here in the USA, I think, home of the "blog," and Freud got it in his head somehow that Jung was comparing him to a corpse preserved in a bog, and Freud swooned and fainted! I think I have that story right, too. But if I don't, who cares? Oh yeah, and what about when Frasier had a Halloween party and came dressed as his hero, Sigmund Freud? I feel, in a related matter, that Frasier would occasionally (though maybe not in the episode in question) make a sarcastic quip about Jungians. I don't have the sources to back that up. None of this is the point. The point is (well, this might not be the point, either) that I was telling McNeil about an Elmore Leonard novel I was enjoying and McNeil said he was envious, because he wasn't making a lot of headway with SYNCHRONICITY (in a subsequent email, he indicated that he was starting to get into it and groove on its vibes, though not in those words). Explaining that he wished Jung's examples were simpler, McNeil wrote, with what I took as plaintiveness, and I believe this is a quote, "Why not cats walking through a door?" So I closed my email and I opened up Elmore Leonard and I read "A cat walks in the room..." WHAT! So I emailed McNeil back and said, I believe, "Synchronicity!" or some other smart remark along those lines. Now for the bogie bits, which I will now attempt to reconstruct before your very eyes through the power of memory. One of them was... hmm... I guess Bogart was getting sick of Sinatra coming over to the house and drinking up all of Bogie's booze, and also (if I am recalling correctly) putting the moves on Lauren Bacall, who was Bogart's legally wedded wife. What was the other one? It had something to do with Bogart winning an Oscar. McNeil did not specify the movie, but I am guessing it was THE AFRICAN QUEEN. I'm not looking it up because I don't care about anything anymore. Anyway, Bogart's buddy tells him if he wins he should act real cool and snarl "It's about time" and casually walk offstage like some kind of tough customer. So Bogart is like, "Wow! That's a great idea! I'll do it!" And then he wins and gets up there and blushes and giggles and cavorts about the stage all giddy and squealing. That can't be right. But as I have already expressed, I don't care. I was reading more of the Elmore Leonard in a doctor's waiting room today. I took it instead of my prescribed waiting room reading material. After that, I stopped by Square Books because my copy of THE ICEMAN COMETH had arrived. I ordered it because I was watching the movie version the other day, and the character Hugo, played by Boss Hogg from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, said what I could have sworn was "Life is a crazy monkey face!" So I was going to check the text and see. So Dr. Theresa is driving us home and I'm flipping through the end of THE ICEMAN COMETH and I find Hugo saying "Hello, nice, leedle, funny monkey-faces!" And another time he goes, "Hello, leedle Don, leedle monkey-face!" I don't know, maybe he's all about the leedle monkey-faces the whole way through, though where I got "Life is a crazy monkey face!" I don't know. In my defense, Boss Hogg isn't exactly Demosthenes in this role. And he is forced by the author, as you have witnessed, to say things like "leedle." When I read the whole play, which I promise you I never will, perhaps I'll come across the exact line that I misheard. Thank you. This has been "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits." Now leave me alone!

I Felt Bad

I felt bad for calling HENRY VI the "HENRY nobody wants" the other day. And I felt bad for thinking "In fact, I bet it is still on the shelf at Square Books because no one will ever, ever want it, and if it is, then I am going to buy it to prove everyone wrong, including myself." And it was, and I did. (See also.) To be specific, it is HENRY VI Part 1. It's like THE GODFATHER saga! I guess there are two more parts, the final one featuring Joe Mantegna. According to the introduction, HENRY VI Part 1 got a rave review from Thomas Nashe! Thomas Nashe was like, "How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectactors..." Yes, that does sound pretty sweet, a bunch of people crying on your skeleton, I love it! After I bought the book out of shame, I went and told Ted at Off Square Books (one of the sister stores) my tale, and he said, "I don't think you hurt his feelings," meaning Shakespeare, presumably, but you can never be too careful, and besides, it was too late!

Layers of Owl

You know that publisher nyrb. They threw a big sale with big, big savings on their "noir" titles, as they designated them: 40% off if you bought four! So one of the ones I got is called THE DAY OF THE OWL. It arrived in today's mail and I wondered whether it "really" had an owl in it, though an owl in the title is good enough for me. Anyway, I idly opened it up and saw an owl in the epigraph! Now, this particular epigraphical owl (I just looked it up in the OED to make sure, and epigraphical is a word, though I don't see evidence that many people have used it since around 1884) was borrowed from Shakespeare's HENRY VI. Now, I could have sworn I found a DIFFERENT owl in HENRY VI, but I poked around on the old "blog" and discovered that the owl of which I was thinking came from RICHARD II. That reminds me, though: I feel that I've been to Square Books a couple of times and wondered if they had a handy mass-market paperback of HENRY V or HENRY IV, but when I looked, all they had was a copy of HENRY VI! The HENRY nobody wants! This is anecdotal and not an accurate reflection of Square Books policy.

Missing Gods

As you know, I used to say I had stopped "blogging" but now I have stopped saying I have stopped "blogging," for reasons I have listed repeatedly for no one. Anyway, there are so many interesting things happening every day that it is almost impossible not to "blog," don't you agree? For example, I know I bought a book at Square Books... let me check my private records... yes, yes, it seems that in May of this year - almost certainly on the same day I received a new belt that caused quite a stir - I bought a book that caught my eye, a book purporting to contain a complete list of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt. This is not to be confused, of course, with my DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT DEITIES, a work of a broader scope. For a while, as I can recall by way of the images that dance so merrily inside my brain, the book I bought about the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt - "COMPLETE" the cover boasted! - sat on the low-slung marble-topped side table where I keep a few books for browsing as I loll about in my favorite chair like a dissolute dandy of yore. I eventually moved the book because it was taking up too much space. I think it interfered with the old cat when he tried to use the table as a means of access to my lap. BUT WHERE DID I PUT IT? The book, I mean, not my lap. That is what I have been trying to figure out for three or four days now. The good thing is that if I ever find the book, it will give me something else to "blog" about, thereby staving off (or helping me embrace?) the abyss. Now you get it!

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

Welcome to the newest recurring "blog" feature since... I don't know when. Since before the TV blew up and I quit "blogging" because I was so dispirited by the blowing up of the TV set? That's right, you're just in time for "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits"! Was McNeilileaks our last recurring feature? It was very topical whenever that was... you know, the leaks era of history. When we'd cram "leaks" together with some word to make some other word. Most recurring "blog" features justly wither on the vine, like "Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis" and the unlamented "Today's Weather." But we here at the "blog" believe that "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" has a dandy future indeed. In part, that's because McNeil, "inspired," I guess we'll call it, by the Million Dollar Book Club, is reading a 700-page celebrity bio of his own choosing. Because I am all tied up with all the various books to which I have committed myself, some of which I haven't even told you about, and find myself unable to join him in the endeavor (in fact, the bio is one I never read, and finally sold to Off Square Books during a long period of unemployment) McNeil has promised to pass along juicy morsels about the life of Humphrey Bogart as he absorbs them into his mighty brain. And he has given me permission to pass them on to you! Before we get started, I should say that I'm nervous about starting a recurring feature right now. It could be a lot of typing for nothing! Let me explain. The other day, a big old water pipe exploded - much like the TV of yore - under our house (the TV was not under our house) and some guys from the water company came by and dug up our yard. One of them took his shovel and severed a cable "linking" us to the "internet," much like the plow cuts the worm in William Blake's famous aphorism. Anyway, this same guy with the wayward shovel "fixed" the problem, but now the "internet" quits working at random times and AT&T, the worst company in the world, makes it nearly impossible to ask a human to come out to the house and look at what's going on. They just don't care! So all these carefully chosen words may vanish as I type them into the abyss. All right! That being said, we're already three bogie bits behind. Let's get started! BOGIE BIT 1: McNeil summarizes Bogart in his prep school days: "perennially bored, few friends, never cracked a book, oddly naive and vulnerable." BOGIE BIT 2: "During the depression, Bogart and his then wife had to move to some shabby apartment along the East River. One of their neighbors was a comedy writer who used to place his meal in a bag, shake it up, and then dump it out on a plate before eating it. No reason given why." As you may well imagine, the latter detail provided some grist for the usual hilarious email antics of McNeil and myself, as I fancifully pictured the comedy writer placing bread, ham, and cheese in the bag and shaking it up and presto, out comes a ham sandwich! Oh, what fun. McNeil replied that he was imagining mashed potatoes and gravy in a bag. Then he remarked, memorably, "Everything was a salad to this guy." I think that's a direct McNeil quotation, though I admit I am not double-checking. BOGIE BIT 3: Young Bogart used to sit in an arcade and play chess against all comers for a dollar a game! I might be forgetting something, but I believe those are all your bogie bits for the moment. Goodbye for now from all of us at "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits."