Rough Cut

Here's a clip from my interview last Friday. I'm afraid to listen to it, so you be the judge.

Hot air didn't stop the Nazis, either.

From a San Francisco bookstore forum, reported in Shelf Awareness:

The idea for the panel, said co-owner Margie Scott Tucker, came from a statement made by Alan Kaufman, novelist, memoirist, influential in the Spoken Word movement and editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Literature: "When I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit." Kaufman moderated the panel, called the "Great Internet Book Burning Panel." (No books e or otherwise were actually burned despite the catchy title.)

Other panelist included beat generation icon Herbert Gold, San Francisco Noir author Peter Plate, Ethan Watters, author of several books including Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? and Cleis Press's Brenda Knight, a participant in the Google case.

Kaufman began by reading an essay soon to be published in Barney Rossett's Evergreen Review, which is now an online-only publication, he noted. "The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now der Book," he read. "High-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle."

Even speaking as someone whose Kindle gathers dust and who views shopping at Amazon.com as an unpleasant act of last resort, get the fuck over yourself.

When writers attack!

I wonder what you call the Twitter equivalent to drunk dialing?

And if you're going to whine about how you used to be reviewed (and how that must hurt) by Anne Tyler, it might be politic to spell her name right.

[Update 11:45 AM. It looks like Alice Hoffman wisely thought to retreat from the field and suspended or cancelled her account. But for those who missed it, Hoffman had taken issue, via several Twitter messages, with a review by Roberta Silman of her latest book in the Boston Globe. Along with publishing the reviewer's phone number and encouraging readers to call and give her hell, Hoffman complained, "Now any idiot can be a critic. Writers used to review writers. My second novel was reviewed by Ann Tyler. So who is Roberta Silman?"]

"Oh yes, the new Lowry. Haven't quite got to it yet, but the woman's a genius."

While I can think of plenty of children's books that are actually coffee table books for adults (I know Wabi Sabi was a popular book in the blogosphere but to me it's a perfect example of this) I'm wondering if there is such a thing among children themselves. Like, is there a Fatal Shore for ten-year-olds? Are there books kids intend (perpetually) to read, pretend to have read or otherwise have a social or internal stake in? We know from Harry Potter that books can be status-bearing among kids, but do they provide enough social va-va-voom to inspire youthful poseurs?

Cuba Libro Prohibito

Vamos a Cuba is back in the news. I'm glad that the Dade County schools are in such great shape that people can expend their energy on this.