Omnivoracious

Friday Night Videos: Bright Shiny Morning versus Vodka Chelsea

Welcome once again to Friday Night Videos, where we aim to give you the kind of match-ups you deserve for hanging out here on the weekend. Tonight, in honor of his guest posting right here at Omnivoracious, it's James Frey talking about his new book Bright Shiny Morning (May 13) versus Chelsea Handler talking about Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, which just hit the NYT bestseller list. Frey you already know about from his posts. Handler, who has a show on E! every weeknight at 11:30, is a little newer to the spotlight, but very talented. She's got incredible comic timing and has a great blend of irreverent, self-deprecating humor and biting satire. The Q&A from a bookstore gig displays her sharp wit and her quick-thinking approach to comedy. (More videos here.)

"When You're Born Into It": Margaret B. Jones's Unearthed Video

Pardon me for piling on but, well, I find it riveting to watch somebody just flat-out lie. Harry Allen at Media Assassin (yes, that "media assassin / Harry Allen") has obtained what appears to be a promo video shot with Margaret B. Jones--er, Peggy Seltzer's faux South Central memoir, Love and Consequences. Have at it (and read Allen's blow-by-blow critique):

(Via GalleyCat. Meanwhile, Ron at GalleyCat has been running an excellent series of posts about the endless trend toward using photos of women facing away from the camera on the covers of women's fiction, but, surprisingly, this now-notorious cover has not come up. Even if "Jones"'s story had been true I wouldn't have expected the cover photo to actually be of Jones and her adoptive "Big Mom," but does it strike anyone else as odd to be using stock photos on the cover of a memoir?) --Tom

Suffering Succotash, Why You Little Bleep!

You could burn your ears several times over reading aloud from Curse + Berate in 69+ Languages, edited by R.V. Branham (and brought to you by the ever-cheeky Soft Skull Press). It's so filthy and rife with controversy, I can't possibly quote from the book itself, except, possibly, from the introduction, in which Branham raises a series of questions, then answered in footnotes so the easily offended won't jump out of their chairs: "What insult has the most time zones, and what is the language of this insult? And what is the most common insult south of the Kush, in south Asia? What was Vladimir Lenin's favorite word?" No, it was not "hushpuppy," "whimsical," or "contented." Instead, it was something that would sear your grandma's eyebrows right off.

I should probably leave it there, though, and let the more adventurous @#&*%! Amazon readers discover more on their own.

Book-Beer Pairings (Part II)--T.C. Boyle, Chip Kidd, Margo Lanagan, James Morrow, and More

     
(Large beer Drayman's Porter with Small Beer's Ant King; Dudman's novel and Old Speckled Hen.)

Much has happened since posting Part I of the book-beer pairings feature. First, I tested out Three Philosophers with Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton and found that (1) it is indeed a great Belgian-style beer, with some very subtle yet strong flavors, and (2) it goes very well with Groff's book.

Then, I decided to check in with Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press because...well, how can you do this kind of feature and not talk to a publisher called Small Beer Press? Gavin has a lot of respect for both books and beer--and access to both locally. “We have a fantastic brewery (ok, we have a few) in the Happy Valley in Massachusetts: the Berkshire Brewing Company. Their Traditional Pale Ale is a summer time treat and all winter we survive on their Drayman's Porter. Which is what we were drinking when the UPS guy delivered galleys of our next collection, Ben Rosenbaum's The Ant King.” (You can now download John Kessel’s excellent new collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Maureen F. McHugh's powerful Mothers & Other Monsters from the Small Beer website.)

So, without further rabbiting, the continuation of this landmark feature...

Guinness Versus Everything Else?!

Although most participants in the second half of this feature preferred matching a dark beer with their books, a few hold-outs for lighter imbibification include Thomas Disch, Nick Mamatas, and Chip Kidd—Kidd mostly because, as a purist, he deferred to his novel: “In The Learners, Happy and Himillsy down Rolling Rocks at Modern Apizz in New Haven, so that would appropriate. Otherwise, everyone drinks martinis.”

Mamatas probably wouldn’t typify his pick as a light beer, although it is: “The official beer of Weinbergia, the country in Under My Roof, is Red Stripe.  Short and hip, sweet and a bit more dangerous than you might at first suspect.  Plus, hipsters dig it like they dig uncombed hair and T-shirts from 1985.”

Similarly, Disch, author of the forthcoming The Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten (coming July 1 from Tachyon Publications), selected either Rhinegold or Lowenbrau for his forthcoming farcical “memoir”: “In the New York of my youth (I was 17 when I got here in '57, and Miss Rhinegold was then an annual tradition. The contestants had their pictures posted in the subways. There was also a Miss Subways. They have both disappeared in our new, unsexed era, but there is another good reason to serve Rhinegold at the book party. It is the beer Wagner made famous. Not much of a beer in itself, as I recall, which is why it may have become extinct, and not the best opera in the Ring either, but no one has ever dared to bring out a beer called Gotterdammerung....I was actually in Lowenbrau Hofbrauhaus in Munich (in 1966). There were tiers of drinking halls where roisterers bellowed out drinking songs. A kind of Valhalla.”

Book-Beer Pairings (Part I): Arianna Huffington, Michael Chabon, Lauren Groff, and More

(Lauren Groff's Monsters paired with Brewery Ommegang's Three Philosophers, along with another great Ommegang beer, and an interloping stout.)

For a long time, I’ve wondered why wine and food should have all the fun. Here at Omnivoracious, we also believe in the complementary pairing of books with...beer. Now, please note that we’re not advocating irresponsible reading, but with the current popularity of micro-breweries and the role of beer in the writing of books over the centuries, it seems somehow irresponsible not to pair the two. We’re frankly a little surprised no one’s done it before.

Thus, I took it upon myself to explore the connection between hops and writing chops, going far afield to ask a diverse group of writers what beer or beers would go best with their latest work. The results were so revelatory and comprehensive that we’re running the first half of this feature today and the second half on Thursday...

Light Beers, Lambics, Arrogant Bastard, and More!

Naturally, everyone approached the question in a slightly different way. Eastern European surrealist Zoran Zivkovic appeared to have already sampled a brew or three, sending in the rhyming verse, “Drink Bud West, drink Bud East,/Drink Bud reading Steps through the Mist.” Elizabeth Hand echoed Zivkovic, even while confessing she hasn’t drunk beer in thirty years: “But the last time I did have one, it was almost certainly a glass of Bud with a shot-glass of Jack Daniels in it. A boilermaker, which is what Cass Neary in [the dark thriller] Generation Loss would drink--24/7, and minus the beer.”

Arianna Huffington, author of the just-released Right Is Wrong, decided on a more political (and surprisingly conservative) approach, writing, “Busch, of course!  Besides the homonymic convergence, distribution of this beer helped make Cindy McCain rich and funded John McCain’s political career.”

Other books that apparently take a lighter approach include Karen Joy Fowler’s Wit’s End, paired with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: “The company describes it as a new take on a classic theme; it's light, but complex.  This is a North Californian company, which fits me and my book.  But what I like best is the slogan--‘the beer that made Chico famous.’ The where?”

Mail from the Gods

After a couple of days of being too busy to open it, my mail (as it does more often than I'd care to admit) has piled up to the point I can barely escape my cubicle, but some sixth sense told me I should open a small package from HarperCollins at the top of the pile, and ... jackpot: the latest reissue of Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, which, as I have often confessed to friends and colleagues who looked at me like I had just owned up to not knowing Catcher in the Rye, I have never read. Glorious! And so to kick off your weekend, here's a short selection of the index entries from the timeless tale of rock'n'roll decadence:

• American tour (First, 1968-1969), blizzard incident, 70-71
• American tour (Ninth, 1973), death threats, 201, 203
• American tour (Ninth, 1973), hotel destruction, 201
• American tour (Tenth, 1975), calamities of, 232-33, 235, 237, 244
• American tour (Tenth, 1975), Squeaky Fromme incident, 248-49
• Beck, Jeff, erratic temperament of, 23-24
• Bonham, John, French hotel destruction, 184
• Bonham, John, Monte Carlo gun incident, 274-75
• Bonham, John, stripping onstage, 90
• Clark, Dick, 29
• Crowley, Aleister, life of, 107-9
• "Dazed and Confused," twenty-minute version, 146
• Devil, See Satan
• Grant, Peter, assault charges, Oakland, 286, 290
• Grant, Peter, Canadian assault charges, 144
• Groupies, Page's feelings about, 78
• Jones, John Paul, pact with Satan and, 95, 308
• Magic, Bonham death rumors, 305
• Marx, Groucho, 223
• Page, Jimmy, black magic and, 95
• Page, Jimmy, fuzzbox and, 17
• Plant, Robert, duality of, 187, 269
• Plant, Robert, sheep farm of, 155-56, 203, 276
• Satan, satanic messages on records, 9, 310-11
• Seattle, Washington, Shark Episode, 78-80
• Yardbirds, Oxford May Ball fiasco, 24-25

--Tom

Bravo TV's Top Writer, Flying Penguins, Vollman's New Children Book: It Must Be April 1

             
    (Squidpunk--a new genre? And the cover of William Vollman's new children's book...)

Ah, April. The full flush of spring, fields overburdened with wildflowers, birds singing, trees a thousand shades of green, and, of course, a sudden seasonal outpouring of very creative nonfiction on the internet. Even Information Week is reporting on it this year. So, here's a short selection of the weird and the silly, all of it as true as you want it to be...

Ed Rants reports on a number of fascinating news items, including William Vollman's new children's book and the creation of a new "pretentious fiction" category in the bookstore.

Locus Online gives us an inside look at Bravo TV's new Top Writer series, tells us that Cory Doctorow is releasing himself under Creative Commons, reveals that George R.R. Martin turning in his final manuscript has caused mass suicides at Bantam Books, and much else.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that scientists have discovered flying penguins:

Elsewhere, J.K. Rowling moves to trademark the words "Harry" and "Potter", Brandon Sanderson's The Way of the Kings stirs controversy, and, finally, some weirdo in a squid hat tries to start a new literary movement from his living room. Enjoy! And feel free to link to more in the comments section.

Thanks to Shaken & Stirred and Antick Musings research assistance.

Do Adult YA Readers Need to Grow Up?

Roger Sutton, editor-in-chief of The Horn Book, sparked an interesting discussion on his blog today with some casually derisive remarks about grown-ups who prefer to read children's books and YA novels:

As annoying as adults who dismiss children's books as unworthy of attention can be, I also feel my jaw clench when a fellow adult tells me that he or she prefers children's books to adult books because they have better writing or values or stories. This is just sentimental ignorance. ... Adults whose taste in recreational reading ends with the YA novel need to grow up.

Some fans of his Read Roger blog (with its "rants and raves" on children's books) were not too happy when he turned his barbs on them. Many of the commenters gave surprisingly specific reasons for liking YA better, like this one:

Ouch! I feel indicted. I do prefer to read children's literature, mainly due to narrative structure. I like fairly linear plots and neatly resolved endings, which puts me off a lot of adult literary fiction (with the exception of some South American authors). So I read a lot of Dickens and children's lit.

Commenters identified Scott Westerfeld and Stephenie Meyer among the YA authors who write the kind of stories they like to read, grown-up or not. --Heidi